


The Mission

by Pandoras_loss



Series: Changing Fate series [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Sex, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-15 04:47:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 129
Words: 343,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9219575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandoras_loss/pseuds/Pandoras_loss
Summary: Seventh of the Changing Fate Series.  Takes place over the course of multiple time periods, but primarily during the year between Seasons 7 and 8.Dean, Sam, and Beth are finally back from their 13 year training mission. They were able to prevent the first seal from being broken and stopped the Apocalypse, but what now?  How will Dean cope with the 15 extra years of torture he experienced under the hands of Alistair.  Will he be able to find himself again?  Can Sam adjust to the new world he lives in now?  Even with her memories of this life, Beth is finding it difficult to adjust.  And now Chuck wants them to do another mission that might prove even more dangerous.





	1. New Rules

**Author's Note:**

> It is strongly advised that people read This Is Your Choice (Part 1), Regrets Lead Nowhere Good (Part 2), Finding Survivors (Part 3), Rising Up Through the Ashes (Part 4), God's Plan (Part 5), Working Holiday (Part 6) first.
> 
> I do not own the rights or credit for creating Supernatural or the characters from the show, including: Sam and Dean Winchester, Castiel, Gabriel, John Winchester, or Mary Winchester to name a few.
> 
> Original characters created by me: Elsbeth (Beth) Foley, Rogue Winchester.
> 
> Chapters are written in the the first person when the point of view comes from Beth, and alternating chapters are written in the third person when the point of view comes from another character that is the focus. Typically, the focus of the third person chapters is mentioned in the first or second sentence.
> 
> There is bad language and graphic violence in this. There is also sex.

Sam pushed his way into the abandoned house that Cas had lead them to and looked around. It was unreal. This wasn’t like the kinds of houses they normally squatted in when they were short on cash. Those were usually condemned. This house looked a little sad on the outside, like the people living here hadn’t been able to shovel the sidewalk or paint this year, but mostly normal. It was house that should be full of signs of life, but instead it looked like it’d been abandoned in a hurry. It was dusty and smelled moldy and looked like it hadn’t been lived in for way too long. He was guessing that any house they stayed in from here on out would look and feel exactly like this. 

He went to a light switch and flipped it on and off a couple of times out of habit. Nothing. Cas walked past him saying, “The electricity only works in a small part of Iowa.” Right. Iowa. That felt like it was an impossible distance away. 

Dean looked around and said, “Awesome. How the hell do we get there?” 

Cas looked back at Dean, and it seemed like he was really seeing Dean for the first time. “You look young.” Dean grinned, and was about to say something he probably thought was funny, but Cas turned away from him. “I take it from your clueless expressions, you are still not the same as you were when you left . . . I am disappointed in both of you . . . I have been kept apprised of the situation . . . Unfortunately, it looks as though I am now stuck with the two inexperienced, selfish . . . I think that Beth being good to you has ruined you Dean, and you Sam . . . you let him abandon her in a training session, because you just have to follow your brother everywhere.”

Sam shared a look with Dean, and Dean looked mad, so Sam shrugged. Everything Cas had said was true. Dean came up to stand beside him, and they watched Cas start prepping the house with wards they’d never seen using a piece of chalk he’d had in his pocket. Looked like they came here with whatever it was they had on them when God sent them here. At least Cas had prepared by having a few things like that chalk and his angel blade. 

Moving to another wall to put up another ward, Cas said, “If you want to go to Iowa, you’ll have to find a snow plough . . . If not, you’ll have to walk until you find something you can use. I should call Gabriel and have him take you back to the camp. Maybe the children there can train you, while Gabriel and Beth help me do this.”

Cas was pissed, and Dean decided to push it. “You always like this now that you’re human, or –“

“I am more free in my thoughts as a human. I feel emotions stronger . . . I’m not unlike Beth now . . . Typically, my anger is directed towards Gadreel, because he annoys me. Right now, the two of you annoy me . . . Are you staying, or not?”

Sam decided to prevent Dean from making things worse with their only lifeline and said, “Uh, yeah . . . We’re here for the Alpha Vamp, right?”

Cas turned to look at him, and relaxed a little. “And his army. Part of your deal was for us to land in the middle of it. We have to stay here until it is gone.”

Sam laughed. “We’re supposed to do this by ourselves?”

Cas’s very angel-like posture returned as he turned back around and said, “We have taken on worse in larger numbers and survived . . . We won’t be going anywhere until that army is dealt with, or I won’t . . . If you’re staying, we have to find our weapons. Maybe God dropped them near us. This is not a world where you can be without them . . . even in Iowa. We’ll have to wait until morning to search.” 

Dean looked from Cas’s back up to Sam and said, “You know what’s going on?”

“Kind of . . . I know we’re in either New Hampshire or Vermont. I know that the Cas here is human, and he doesn’t like angels. I know I asked for Beth to be sent to the camp, so she could spend some time with Rogue before she comes here. I think there might be a target on your back and maybe even mine with a few of the vampires, because when they were humans, they were the leaders at our Kansas camp, and Beth had Gabriel send them here as punishment. They were executing people who disagreed with them and let thousands upon thousands of survivors get turned into monsters, so Eve could create an army big enough to maybe defeat the Leviathan. The people that got sent here were given the choice to die as humans or get turned. The ones that are vampires now want to kill you to get back at Beth. Uhh, what else . . . that’s it . . . other than that this is totally foreign to me. I’m just regurgitating things Beth told me. You remember anything from what she’s said?” 

Dean shook his head and said, “Think you have a better idea of what’s going on than I do,” before he looked at Cas. “You think our weapons are near where we landed?” 

Cas stopped and looked at Dean before he said, “I hope they are. I may have to ask Gabriel to bring them. We’ll also need vampire scent masking ash . . . unless you two have any on you.” Cas waited to see if they did, and then moved to another wall when it became apparent they didn’t. 

Sam tried striking up friendly conversation with Cas. “So, we’ve been gone for 2 weeks? Why didn’t God just bring us back the second he took us?”

Cas shook his head. “I suspect that maybe it was to help sell the notion at the start that it was something similar to what Gabriel did in raising Beth over the course of 4 months, but because He’s God, he had to make it sound better and say it was 2 weeks . . . Subtle trickery . . . I assume you two being brought back the way you are is as well . . . I don’t believe he said, he’d bring you back as you. Just that he’d bring you back. If I had to guess, he’s going to use your memories of this life as leverage to get you to agree to the mission . . . if either of you were thinking about backing out.” 

Sam quickly said, “I thought he was about free will. If he strong arms us into it, doesn’t it go against that?”

Cas concentrated on the sigil he was drawing and answered, “No . . . You have the choice to either stay as you are or go back to the way you were. Maybe staying the way you are is something you want. Maybe it isn’t . . . it’s your choice to decide. He may even allow you to forget this life if you go on the mission. Maybe that’s what you’ll want . . . only time will tell.” 

So this was it. There was no going back. This is all there was now. This universe or going on a mission and then returning to this universe. Sam found that utterly depressing now that he was here. Maybe Cas was right. Maybe they were out of their depth. Maybe he should contact Gabriel. He wasn’t really looking forward to it, because Gabriel still kind of freaked him out, but Gabriel was the most powerful being Sam had ever met . . . well, he had met God, but he couldn’t remember what God looked like, and even if he could, he doubted that God would listen to anything he had to say. 

Sam went to the other room under the pretense of making sure it was clear and decided to pray. _Gabriel. It’s Sam Winchester. I don’t know if Beth has told you yet, but we’re back. Dean and I don’t remember anything about this life. We’re in New Hampshire or Vermont or something. Cas is here. He’s human. Not sure –_

“You going to get to the point, or what?” 

Sam turned expecting to see Beth’s Dad and instead took a startled step back when he recognized the guy from TV who looked nothing like her Dad. “Gabriel?” 

Gabriel rolled his eyes and said, “Live and in the flesh. What do you want?” 

“I don’t know. Our weapons, and to be somewhere other people are.” 

Gabriel sighed. “If you want to see people in this life, you have to work to find them, Sam, pre-school is over. You don’t just get to have things handed to you here. You have to work for them.” 

“I don’t know. Beth just asks for things, and she gets them, right?” 

“She played around with it in the last universe to see how it worked. Here she works hard . . . just like she did in Hell. You need to kill the vampire army and the Alpha, and then you can come home to regroup. You can’t just quit in the middle of a mission . . . This world is depending on you to do what you came here to do, so you have to do it until God is ready to have his meeting with you.” 

“We’re really ill-equipped to do that though.”

“This coming from the guy who I’m guessing successfully fought his way out of Hell, or he and his brother wouldn’t be here right now. You’ve got this, Sam.” 

Sam looked around the house again and said, “Yeah, but what about our weapons? Can you at least help us find them?” 

Gabriel looked like he thought Sam wasn’t getting the message. “No can do, Sam. You need to start doing things for yourself, and that’s as good a place to start as any. It’s not your fault. From what I can tell, the other Castiel and Beth did a lot for you two, so you wouldn’t have to do it, and the first time around, it took years of dealing with the seals and Lucifer before you got to a point where you . . . well not you, but Dean, was able to slip right into the role of leading what was left of the human race. You were up to it before you left though. It’s in there even if you don’t remember it.” 

Dean walked into the room either to see what was taking so long or because he heard voices and stopped short at the sight of Gabriel. “Who the fuck is that?” 

Gabriel shook his head in disappointment. “Wow. Do you want to explain it to him, Sam? It looks like you were the only one paying attention in class.” 

Not really, he didn’t think this was going to go down very well. “This is Gabriel. Remember this is the way he looked when he was pretending to be the Trickster on that TV show. I guess this is what he really looks like.”

Dean barely processed anything other than, 'Gabriel,' and quickly said, “Where’s Beth?”

Sam already told him that. Dean really seemed to be out of his depth here. Gabriel sounding, slightly annoyed answered, “She’s currently putting an end to a teenager revolt that kicked off two days ago, because Castiel cannot lie as well as he thinks . . . It might take a little while. They were lecturing her on taking better care of herself the last I saw.” 

Shaking his head, Sam said, “And you couldn’t have done something to calm them down when you came back?“ 

“A day and a half ago? Too late. The damage was already done. All I did was get them to free the adults at the camp that they’d locked up in panic rooms, so they could look for her themselves.” 

_What?_ “God told me he would keep teaching my classes? How did he let it get so out of control?” 

Gabriel laughed. “Are you kidding me? He loves that kind of ‘sticking it to the authorities, and fighting for other people’ attitude. Watching it unravel has probably been one of the most entertaining things he’s seen in a while, especially since he was one of the authority figures they were rebelling against . . . Now are you guys done with your questions?” 

_Not really. We have no idea what we’re doing._

Sam slowly exhaled a nervous breath and nodded, so Gabriel said, “I’ll tell Beth you two still don’t remember anything. Maybe she’ll decide to come help out, or maybe she’ll decide to stay there, keep an eye on the kids, and spend some time with her daughter . . . I’ll leave it up to her. And just so you know, Cas knows what he’s doing. I’d trust him by my side in any battle even if he is a human.” Then he disappeared. 

It looked like that last bit had meant a lot to Cas even if he didn’t say anything and just kept working away on the wards in this room. For now it looked like they were on their own, so Sam went over to Cas and asked him what he was doing. “These are wards Kevin found in one of the tablets. It wards against monsters that survive on blood, like vampires and djinn.” 

Sam asked him if he wanted help, and Cas broke his piece of chalk in two before handing half of it to Sam. Now, this felt like something he could do. 

\-----------------

Sam woke up in the morning expecting to find that he’d imagined the whole thing, but instead found that he was still in a musty house that had been abandoned in a hurry. He’d taken the first watch, while Cas slept, and Dean pretended to sleep until he couldn’t anymore and told Sam that he’d take over. From the looks of things, Dean was sleeping now, so at least he’d gotten some sleep. He’d probably wake up in a similar state of disappointment that Sam had, so Sam let him sleep a little longer while he went in search of Cas. 

The first thing Cas did was toss him a duffle bag. “That’s yours. I found it near where we appeared in the woods last night. It should have clothes in it that will do a better job of keeping you warm.” Cas seemed to be in a better mood this morning anyway. Maybe he'd just been cranky last night, because he'd been locked up by a bunch of their kids at the camp.

While Sam looked at the bag, Cas handed him a can of chicken and dumplings. Turning it over in his hand, Sam said, “This is out of date.” 

Cas went back to eating what looked like canned oranges and said, “It was not dented or open. This is the only kind of food we have until we can get back to camp . . . I raided that from a house down the road.” Right. Could somebody tell him why Beth thought this universe was so great again? If he’d known that dinner last night was going to be the last real food he was going to have, he would’ve savored it more. 

Cas pushed the little gas stove towards Sam after Sam sat next to him, and Sam looked at his can of food again. “Do I have to eat this now, or are there anymore tins of fruit?” 

Cas looked at Sam’s can. “You could have a can of fruit, but you were always telling me that there aren’t enough calories in one to do what we need to do in a day, so you should probably eat that, because we have a long day ahead of us, and that has more calories.” 

Sam laughed while he reached into his pocket and pulled out a swiss army knife, so he could open his chicken and dumplings. “Why do I get the feeling you’re holding out on the fruit?” 

“I do like fruit. Fruit cocktail is my favorite. I’ll probably have that for dinner or macaroni and cheese. I found a couple of boxes of that too.” 

Sam put his opened can of food on the hob, so it could cook and said, “So, is that how this works with the food? We get one can or one box per meal?” 

Cas nodded while he dug his fork into an orange. “It is when we’re fortunate enough to find food . . . especially out on the road. If we’d packed for this, we would’ve brought more, but we still would’ve only eating one tin per meal. When we run out of those, we use ration packs and have to start raiding houses.” 

“And what’s with the weather? I know Beth thought that the snow was melting, but it’s almost April or is April now, and it still feels like January.” 

Cas looked out a window and said, “The snow is melting. It used to be a lot higher, but you’re right, it should be warmer than it is if the weather is really returning to normal. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe Michael wasn’t responsible for it, but whoever was responsible for it had to know about Michael’s predicament and then death, because the snow started melting when he was captured by Crowley, and it started snowing again when Dean and Beth rescued him, but then it started melting again after Dean killed him.” 

“So, God?” 

Cas shrugged, like that was the only other explanation he could come up with and then he hesitated before fishing for another slice of orange and adding, “Or the witches in New Orleans . . . some of them might be able to know what is happening in the world beyond their city gates, and their combined power could pull something like this off, but I don’t know why they’d help.” 

Maybe they weren’t trying to help. Beth said that if the snow melted, they could finally grow enough food to support their growing population. “How many witches?” 

Cas said he didn’t know, but the last he heard New Orleans was entirely populated by witches, so thousands. That was a lot of witches. “So, maybe they didn’t do this anywhere but the US?” Cas said it was possible, but he hoped not, because the snow here was the only reason anyone had been able to survive the Croat outbreak even if a lot of people starved or froze to death in the cold. So, it’d helped and it’d done a lot of damage too. 

God was pretty hands-off on doing anything if he let this entire planet go to waste, so he probably hadn’t . . . unless. “Could Beth have asked for something like this without knowing?” 

Cas froze in thought. “That’s possible. She didn’t know she was asking for and receiving things for a long time after she started doing it. I don’t know how it was where you’ve been the last 2 weeks, but in this timeline God tends to only give her one thing at a time, so she has to wait for one task to be completed before she can ask again, and even then there may be something of a waiting period.” 

“That’s not the way it worked in the other universe.”

Cas shrugged and said, “Different universe, different rules . . . If she could ask more often, is there anything she couldn’t ask for while she was there?”

“To be healed or saved from dying.”

Cas shook his head while he punctured another orange and said, “To my knowledge, He’s never denied her help when she was being killed by something in this universe.” 

So, the moral of that story was that any universes God sent them to on this mission would have different rules that they needed to learn if they wanted to survive? This was getting more complicated the more Sam thought about it.


	2. The Makings of a Single Mom

I finished packing a spare duffle full of canned foods in case we needed them and went to my Dad who was holding Rogue. She smiled and reached for me, so I gave her my hand and told her to be good for her Grandpa. Gripping onto my hand really tight, she nodded solemnly, and my Dad said, “She’s thinking that she’ll be really good if it means you’ll come back.” 

I seriously considered canceling my plans and staying there with her right then and there. A child should never think that they have to be good in order for her parents to come back to her. “You know what? I’m bringing her with me. I’m just going to –“ Dad snapped his fingers, and her bag showed up on the floor next to my feet. “You don’t think I should leave her here?” 

“She’s your daughter. What do you think?” 

I think I didn’t want her out of my sight. I’d spent way too long away from her even if she didn’t know I had. “Okay, then I’m bringing her with me. There are 4 of us to watch her, right? What are you going to do?” 

Dad said something about not having visited the Playboy mansion in way too long before he slumped and looked out the window towards the cabins and added, “You’re going to have to talk to them again before you leave. And even then, I should probably stay here. Being a responsible adult sucks. You’ve changed me.” Yeah, yeah, and ruined his life. Whatever. “What are you kidding me? You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I’ll just have to wait until you get back to go blow off some steam.” I’d known that I missed him, but I hadn’t realized how much until I had to go again.

I put my hands up and told Rogue that I was going to take her, but she shook her head, so I said, “I’m not hugging you goodbye. I’m taking you with me.” 

She looked up at Dad, and he nodded in response to whatever she’d thought, so she smiled, but when I went to take her again, she shook her head and said, “Walk.” 

Another new word, or at least I hadn’t heard her say it until now. She amazed me. “Okay, you hold my hand and walk.” 

She started clapping, so I guess she was happy with that decision. As soon as my Dad put her on the ground, she grabbed ahold of my hand and used her other hand to start tugging on the strap of her bag, so she could drag it with her. She got it a couple of inches, and I asked her if she wanted help. I knew when she looked up at me that she had no idea what ‘help’ meant. How do you explain ‘help’ to somebody? Help wasn’t actually taking over and doing something for somebody, but that’s what I really wanted to do. 

“When you can’t do something by yourself, ask for help. I think you can take it to the door. If you do that, I’ll help you by taking it the rest of the way down the stairs, because it’s heavy, and we need to go talk to the teenagers before we go.” 

I looked up at Dad, and he said she caught less than half of that and to try cutting down the number of words, so I tried again. “You need help. Your bag is too big for you to take down the stairs. You take it to the door. I’ll help you by taking it the rest of the way.” 

Dad said that was a little better, but I should try cutting down the number of words a little more. “You take your bag to the door.” I glanced at Dad, and he said she understood, ‘You,’ ‘bag,’ and ‘door,’ so we were good so far. Then I said, “Mom will help you take your bag down the stairs.” She got, ‘Mom,’ ‘bag,’ and ‘stairs,’ so I think we were pretty much there. 

She looked at the bag again and up at me and nodded before she went back to tugging on the strap to get it to the door. It took her a little while, but she did it, and then when she got there she kind of breathlessly dropped the strap on the floor and pointed up at me. “You want Mom to help you take your bag now?” She looked at the bag and up at me, and then she got this little stubborn look on her face before she shook her head, picked up the strap, and started trying to tug it out the door and across the front porch. That isn’t what I’d been planning at all. 

Dad started laughing. “You were the same way. Never wanted my help on anything. She’ll learn to do things on her own, but she needs to know she can ask for help when she needs it.” 

Looking back at him, I asked for some genuine advice. “Yeah, and how do you teach them to ask for help when you can’t blow up a snowman?” 

He watched her get to the first step and said, “Watch her and wait and when she looks like she can’t do anymore on her own, let her know it’s okay if she asks you for help. She’ll get it . . . eventually.” 

To do that, you had be around all the time, so you could see when she needed help. That’s what I was going to do from now on. When we started up this camp, we said that we’d take her on the road with us and have one of us stay in the room to take care of her, so she wouldn’t be left alone while the others hunted. Dean and Sam solved that by not letting her leave the house. Then I came back, and we brought her with us on the road, but the Changeling Alpha happened, and we stopped doing that until we brought her with us in . . . was it February? We were doing okay given the circumstances, but we could do better.

By the time she’d dragged the bag to the bottom step, I was sure she had broken something in there, so I unzipped her bag and had a look. The base of her pyramid toy was broken off. She took one look at it and seemed like she was going to cry. She generally didn’t cry. Who knew she liked this toy that much? I should, but I didn’t. Well, I guess I did now. 

I put my hand in my pocket to see if I had anything in there that I could use to fix it . . . tape or glue or something. Why the hell would I have any of those things in my pocket? _Chuck, you wanna help me out with some wood glue?_ Hm. Chuck worked too. _Thanks._

I smiled and said, “It’s okay. I’ll fix it, and it’ll be as good as new. Watch.” 

She calmed down and watched me squeeze the glue onto the base and then studied what I was doing as I put the two pieces back together. I held them there long enough for them to stick even if they weren’t dry yet. When I took my hand away, she watched to see if it’d worked, and then she smiled and went to grab for it. I pulled it away and said, “It needs to dry. You can play with it later.” She paused and then nodded to let me know she could wait. 

By then the kids in camp had come up in a semi-circle around us. Standing to look at them, I said, “Remember our deal. What is it again?” 

Jenna said, “If we stay in school, keep doing our training, help build a glasshouse, while you’re gone, and don’t lock the adults up, you’ll stay here for two months no matter what after you get back, and any big decisions after that on where you’re going, you’ll let us know about before you do them, so we can stay informed.” 

Pretty much. I was taking the brunt of the blame for disappearing even though it hadn’t been my fault. I guess I was the face they could be mad at right now. “And?” 

Ben answered that one. “The instigators of the insurrection have to make dinner for the camp for one month, because you’ve given the adults on food detail a vacation. Jody is in charge, but she won’t be doing training alongside us anymore, because she isn’t a child who has to prove herself to us, and if we do all of that, do all of our homework, and do something nice for the adults around here, you have a surprise for us when you get back.” 

“Wanna know what it is?” They’d gone from blandly reciting what I’d told them to looking interested, so I said, “I’ve actually got a couple of surprises . . . One, we’re going to go on an extended field trip to see the other camps. You guys need to step out into the world a little bit more, so you can see why we leave as much as we do, and you need to see the kids in the Kansas and Wisconsin camps you haven’t seen in too long, and two . . . the older teens that want to go are going on a hunt. I think it’s time. There’s a sanatorium not too far from here that I am sure is still full of spirits . . . We’ll discuss it when I get back, so we can develop a strategy that doesn’t include any of you shooting one another or being spirited away by spirits when nobody is looking, but I want actual proof that you can handle the responsibility that entails by the time I get back, and a list of everybody who wants to go. Use the time while I’m away to think about what it is that you really want to do with your lives. Got it?” 

The kids all looked a little shell-shocked at that until Jenna shook her head and said, “Who are you, and what have you done with Beth?” 

I smiled briefly. “I don’t know. I’m still working that out. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve had my mind messed with more than anyone I’ve ever heard about. I just spent the last 13 years re-learning how to being a hunter, and I started when I was 16, but you guys have been surviving in a much more hostile environment than I ever did, and you’re still here. I need to start accepting the fact that you’re going to do what you want to do a lot sooner than I’m ready for you to do it, and maybe I need to back off a little and let you see if this is what you want or can do in a real situation. It’s the only way you’ll know. It’s the only way I’ll know. It’s the only way I’ll be sure that you guys are really going to be okay if something happens to me. And I want you to know now before you make your decisions that it doesn’t matter to me if you’re a hunter or a non-hunter. I’d still kill, bleed, and die for you. You’re all my kids, or at least that’s the way I see it.” 

Jenna asked why it sounded like I wasn’t going to come back, so I said, “I will this time, I can promise you that.” 

Ty asked what I meant when I said that I’d been gone for 13 years. “Thought Dad explained this to you when he came back, and I explained it last night.” 

Ty told me to explain it again. A brief chuckle burst out of me when I heard my Dad say, “Try using fewer words. It worked for Rogue.” 

“Okay, think of time as a forest of trees. The tree with Sam and Dean Winchester is a very big tree smack dab in the middle of the forest . . . It’s the most important one. Now other trees might have just Dean or just Sam or neither of them. Those trees might have you or me or none of us, but this tree has both of them, and in it they’re both hunters, and that’s what makes this tree important.” 

I paused, because Dad whispered, “Fewer words.” 

“The trunk of this tree is a life where they never met me, so we’re on a big branch of that tree where they have.” I paused again to make sure they were still with me. They seemed to be. The trunk of this tree was the TV show, or I was pretty sure that it was, but they didn’t need to know that.

“That branch had a smaller branch coming off of it, and that is the branch where we live right now. What makes this branch special is that it is the only branch on the entire tree where 10 prophecies leading to 10 tablets that could give somebody the power to kill God are. If anybody found all 10 tablets and had somebody like Kevin help them get the power in those tablets, then the entire forest of trees would disappear. As you all know we’ve been destroying tablets when we’re done with them, so that isn’t a problem here anymore.” They seemed okay with that. I glanced back at Dad, and he seemed okay with that too.

“Now the timeline where I was for the last two weeks was a smaller branch off of this one. It still had the 10 prophecies and tablets, but it started when I was 16 and met Dean. It needed to become its own branch and it’s own separate universe, because the things that happened there could’ve had a negative impact on this universe if it didn't. 

For example, Dean didn’t sell his soul in that branch. That could’ve had a negative impact on this branch if it wasn’t kept separate, because it would’ve meant that I never heard Dean’s name in the corridors of Heaven, and I wouldn’t have ever gone to meet with God to get out of Heaven. Raphael would’ve found out I knew where the tablets were, and he would’ve been able to torture me until he found the location of all 10 tablets, and then the entire forest would have been destroyed. 

This branch doesn’t need the branch where I’ve been, but that branch does need this one, because on this branch, I got out of heaven and my Dad was raising me the months Dean was in Hell, so if it weren’t for this branch, I would’ve never been there to meet Dean when I was 16 on the other branch. That branch is where I’ve been for 13 years, and God just decided to bring me back 2 weeks later.” 

There. That was fewer words. I got rid of explaining time loops that could happen within each separate timeline to simplify it and threw the tree thing in there to help them visualize it. Jenna asked what happened to the tablets in that timeline if they could destroy the whole forest, but I already handled that. “I destroyed the angel tablet a couple of months ago. It’s the only one I could get my hands on.” They seemed okay with that. Dad told me I probably could’ve just told them that I lived on the smaller branch for 13 years without bringing up why that timeline had to become a separate universe, but I’m pretty sure that’s similar to what he told them, and it hadn’t worked. 

_I should probably get going._ “So, are we good?” 

“Yeah, we’re good. You don’t make promises you won’t keep, so we expect to see you as soon as this Alpha Vampire is gone, and we want all the gory details,” Ty said as he stepped forward to give me a big hug. 

I think that hug was something I’d needed a lot more than I ever would’ve thought. “I’ll try to do better. I’m sorry I keep having to ask for second chances.” 

Stepping back, Ty said, “You’re family. You don’t have to ask for second chances,” and I think it was a good thing that my Dad decided to send Rogue and I to some house in New Hampshire at that exact moment, because by the time I realized I was in a different place, I’d already lost a couple of tears. Damnit, or maybe it was the worst time, because now Sam was asking me what was wrong. 

I quickly wiped them away and said, “Nothing. I’m fine. It’s just the kids at the camp are way too good . . . I, uh, I heard that you still don’t remember anything. Um, this is Rogue. I’m not leaving her behind anywhere anymore.” 

She was clinging to my leg, which was kind of unusual for her. I guess she wasn’t all that used to traveling by angel. 

Sam crouched down to get a better look at her and smiled. “Hi, Rogue.” He looked up at me when she buried her face in my leg to hide from him. That’s when I noticed that Sam didn’t quite look the way he had the last time she saw him . . . He still looked like a 25 year old with shorter hair, not a 30 year old, but I wouldn’t have expected her to really pick up on that. I guess kids do. I think I read somewhere that kids don’t like when their Dad’s shave their beards off or something, because they don’t think they’re the same person anymore. 

It was still weird though, because she was never really shy about meeting strangers if that’s what she thought Sam was. “Rogue, this is Sam.” 

She perked up at the mention of Sam until she realized I meant the guy crouching next to her, and then she gave him a good hard look and said, “No . . . Sam!” before she buried her head in my leg again. 

“Sorry, guess you aged a lot in the last 5 years.” 

Looking down at me, as he stood, Sam asked, “Is this going to be too confusing for her?” 

_Maybe?_ Cas came into the room, and she squealed, “Cas!” before toddling up to him and wanting to be held. Cas didn’t confuse her, but then Cas looked the same. I wondered what she’d do when she saw Dean. That could be a disaster in the making, and it’s not like we had a plethora of psychologists to help her with stuff like that when she got older. 

“Not as confusing as when she sees Dean. Maybe you should go tell him to take that silver amulet off if he’s still wearing it. At least if he’s not wearing it, she’ll know not to confuse him with her Dad.” 

Sam stopped short at my final words. “But he is her Dad.” 

“He isn’t right now. Her Dad walked the floor with her every night when she was a baby. He could be bat shit crazy and still able to put her to sleep at night. He reads her favorite book to her a certain way. He babysits her when I’m teaching in the school. They hang out and play all the time. He is her entire world. I don’t want her to be confused on who her Dad is.” 

I probably should’ve made sure Dean wasn’t around before I said that. Walking down the stairs, he took the silver amulet off, discarded it on the banister, and said, “Good thing I’m not her Dad, or I’d wonder what the hell she’s doing in a place surrounded by vampires. So, are we going to do this, or what?” Without stopping, he picked up an axe resting up against the wall next to the door, and walked out. 

Rogue chose that moment to look up at me and say, “Dada . . . grrr.” 

_Yeah, your Dad is mad. Fuck._ I’d say I got that one wrong, but he still wasn’t her Dad even if she thought he was. “Is your Dad wearing silver?” 

She went from looking towards the door and back up at me to looking over at the amulet and pointing at it while she said, “Dad . . . sil.” Fuck it. She was way too smart sometimes.


	3. No Dad

Dean looked out at the woods unsure of where to start. He heard the crunching of snow behind him, and assumed it was Sam. He was a little surprised that it was Cas. Hadn’t thought Cas liked them much here. “I think you’re incapable of being happy, Dean.” Hadn’t really expected Cas to say that either.

“Come on. You heard what she said back there.” 

Cas cast him a look. “I did. Did you see how Rogue reacted to seeing Sam?” 

_What? No._

Dean shook his head and Cas said, “He scares her, and Sam is the second or third most important person in her life. Beth didn’t want you to scare her too . . . and she doesn’t want Rogue to expect you to be her Dad, because right now you don’t know how to do that or be that for her. She’s trying to protect Rogue.” 

_Sam scared her?_ Then why the hell was he staying behind to get to know her? He should be out here in the fucking cold looking for a way to kill these vampires too. Cas dropped a duffle bag next to Dean and said, “This is your bag. I found it earlier.” Finally, some good news. It was kind of like Christmas. Dean wondered what he was going to get. 

“You know how many vamps there are?” 

Cas shook his head. “If Beth brought a satellite phone, we should be able to call Bobby and find out an estimate from him.” 

Bobby. Dean had forgotten Bobby was here. At least there was someone here he knew other than Sam. “Anybody else we know from our other life?” 

Cas got a little quiet and then said, “I’m not sure what people you met there, but I think you might know Meg.” 

_Meg? Who’s Meg? Wait, Meg?_ “You mean the demon that almost killed my Dad and Beth?” 

Cas looked over at him with a half-smile and said, “She isn’t a demon anymore. We cured her. She’s a hunter, one of our best ones.” 

That was seriously fucked up unless . . . “She didn’t do all that shit she did to us in this life?” 

“Well, she didn’t almost kill Beth, but everything else she did was probably the same if she tried to trap your Dad using you and Sam in Chicago, killed your Dad’s friends –“

“Friend . . . Jim Murphy.”

“Well, then that was different because she killed at least another one that I know about. She, also took your Dad in exchange for the Colt, you and Sam exercized her, and she came back and possessed Sam later. She –“

“You mean like that TV show.”

Cas sighed in disappointment and said, “You got to watch the show Beth did?”

Yeah, he guessed he did. “Saw a couple of seasons. You’re gonna have to talk to Sam about it, if you want to know more. He watched ‘em all.”

Cas shook his head. “You shouldn’t have passed up that opportunity. I would have gladly done it. Right now, you don’t know how many things were changed from –“

Dean looked back at the abandoned house and said, “Think I have a pretty good idea.”

“No, you don’t . . . not really.” 

One thing he did know was that 2 days ago he was in his car on his way to Orlando with Sam wondering if he could make things right with Beth, and now he was in a wintery hellhole full of vampires that were probably sleeping somewhere. He was here with a Cas he didn’t know, his brother, Beth, and a daughter that wanted a guy who looked just like him to be her Dad. It kind of felt like it was ‘sink or swim’ time, and he was sinking.

As soon as he and Cas walked in through the door of the house, Cas asked Beth if she could find out how large the army was, so they could come up with a plan. While she and Cas were doing that, Rogue came running up to Dean. It looked like she was going to wrap her arms around his legs, and then she stopped and looked up at him. Looking back over her shoulder towards the stairs, she said, “Dad, sil -er?” 

His amulet was still over there, an amulet he hadn’t been able to take off until now. He couldn’t. He loved the woman who gave it to him too much to give up on things for good. Fuck taking it off. He wanted it back. 

Dean went over to pick it up and brought it back over to Rogue before crouching down to show it to her. “See I can touch this, so I’m not a monster, but I’m not your Dad.” 

She reached for the amulet and had a good look at it before she looked a little confused and looked at him again. She pointed to his neck. “You want me to put it back on?” 

She nodded, so he said, “Yeah, me too, kid,” before he did, and then she had another long look at him. 

“No, Dad?” 

God, she’d win a contest for the saddest eyes anyway. “Not yet.” 

She leaned a little closer and whispered, “Want Dad.” 

Dean glanced towards everyone else in the room, and they were all busy. “You want your Dad?” 

She nodded. “Want Dad.” 

Looking in Beth's direction, he asked, “What about your Mom?” 

Rogue looked over at Beth and said, “Mom,” before she sighed. “Dad . . . I tect Mom. No Dad . . . I tect Mom?” 

Okay. He could handle one or two words, but the sentences were freaking him out even if he didn’t know what she was trying to say. Dean looked over the back of the couch at Beth again and said, “Hey, should she be talking in sentences?” 

Finally looking over at them, Beth answered, “Uh, she has a pretty large vocabulary for a kid her age. 2-word sentences she can do pretty well even if she’s young to be doing them. If she’s doing more than that, it’s because she and her Dad talk all the time. He can get her to say more than anybody else. He knows what she’s trying to say as well as my Dad does, so he prompts her to say more. Why? What’d she say?” 

Dean looked back over at Rogue while Beth came around the couch. “Tell your Mom what you told me?” 

Rogue got bashful and shook her head until Beth knelt down on the other side of her, and then she reached for Beth’s hand, like it was a lifeline. “What’d you tell him?” 

Rogue looked down and said, “Shhhh . . . no say.” 

Beth looked a little confused. “It’s a secret?” 

Rogue quickly looked up at Beth and nodded before she pointed at Beth. “From me?” Rogue nodded again.

Beth looked over her head at Dean and said, “Verbs and understanding the abstract concept of a secret are new to me. What’d she say?” 

He didn’t know, so he shrugged, and Beth’s attention went back on Rogue. “You can tell me. You won’t get in trouble.” 

Rogue looked a little concerned and asked, “Dad?” 

Beth smiled. “Your Dad won’t get in trouble either.” 

Rogue thought about it and finally decided to give in on it. “Dad . . . I tect Mom.” 

Beth’s brow furrowed in concentration before she finally tried, “You and your Dad protect me?” 

Rogue nodded and then said, “No Dad . . . I tect Mom?” 

Beth exhaled slowly and shook her head. “No. You don’t have to do it alone if your Dad isn’t here. I can protect me, and I protect you. I can protect your Dad too.” Rogue started to shake her head, and Beth said, “Remember the fire?” Rogue nodded. “Who protected you from the fire?” Rogue pointed at Beth, so Beth said, “It is not your job to protect me. It’s my job to protect you just like I did with the fire.” 

She jumped a little when Rogue unexpectedly shouted, “NO! I tect Mom!” 

Beth’s head tilted to the side while she watched Rogue. “Is the fire the reason you’ll only hold my hand?” Rogue shook her head, so Beth said, “Putting you in that duffle bag is the first time I picked you up. You didn’t get hurt. I did. Do you think I got hurt because I picked you up?” Rogue wouldn’t answer, so Beth said, “Do you think I got hurt because of you?” 

When Rogue sat down in a huff in protest, Dean laughed. “Does she even understand what you’re saying?” 

“She understands the nouns. If that’s all, then probably not, but then I didn’t think she knew what a secret meant or what protect meant, so maybe she knows more than I think she does,” before she looked at Rogue and sighed. Then something occurred to her, and she gave Rogue a no-nonsense look and said, “Rogue, no protect Mom,” before she got up when Rogue uncrossed her arms and looked shocked that Beth had said that. 

“Yes!” 

Beth started to walk off. “No, nobody needs to protect Mom!” 

Rogue looked to Dean for help, and he shrugged, because he didn’t really know what was going on here, so Rogue shouted, “No Dad!” at him and then got up to follow Beth, yelling, “I tect Mom!” 

Beth looked back at her and said, “No,” and Rogue followed her out of the room shouting, “Yes.” 

He looked over at Sam who’d moved to the couch at some point and laughed in confusion, because he had no idea what just happened, and Sam leaned over the back of the couch to whisper, “In addition to her eyes, I think I can 100% confirm that she’s yours now. The similarities have to be genetic for her to be the way she is so young, and I don’t think you’re raising her like Dad raised you.” 

“What the hell are you talking about, Sam?”

“If her Dad’s not around, it’s her job to protect her Mom all by herself? Sounds a lot like you with me when we were growing up, and it looks cute, because she’s so small, and Beth’s her Mom, but she’s dead serious about that being her responsibility. That’s why she got so upset when Beth fired her. And if that’s the reason she won’t let Beth hold her, then if it means she can keep Beth safe, she is willing to sacrifice getting hugs from her Mom, which she obviously wants because of the way she clutches onto Beth’s hand anytime she’s upset, and that’s not even getting into the guilt she feels for her what happened during this fire if she thinks what happened to Beth is her fault.” 

_Okay, whatever that means._ “Why’d she get pissed at me?” 

Sam laughed and said, “She wanted you to tell her Mom not to fire her from being her protector. You didn’t, so she told you that you weren’t her Dad. Presumably she thinks that her Dad wouldn’t have let that happen, because she thinks he can walk on water.” 

At this point, Dean was looking for somebody who didn’t. Even if he thought this guy sounded like a dick, apparently nothing that guy did was bad enough for anyone to think he wasn’t a saint. Beth said he could be bat shit crazy earlier though. Maybe they knew he wasn’t a saint, but didn’t really care that he wasn’t, because the good outweighed the bad?

He spent the rest of the day kind of listening to what Cas and Sam had to say about what they were doing tonight while he watched Rogue and Beth without making it look like that’s what he was doing. Watching Beth with her daughter . . . She wasn’t some closed-off, secret-keeping stranger or a hunting goddess. She wasn’t the girl he’d grown up with either. She looked more relaxed here a world that could kill her at any second than she ever had in their other life, and not only that, but she was a Mom teaching her daughter how to put rings on a tower, read, or use a spoon. 

Being in this life and being a Mom looked good on her. So did age. She looked a little more mature, and a lot more like the type of person who could do the shit he’d seen her do in the other timeline instead of like a woman he’d known for over a decade that had been possessed by somebody else . . . and she was gorgeous. She was a few years older than him now, and she was better looking today than she was yesterday in Orlando. Now, she looked just that little bit different enough that his mind could make sense of her being a different person, a person he wanted to get to know . . . maybe like he hadn’t given himself a chance to do in their other life. He just needed to figure out how to do that.

When it was time to go do a recon mission, so they could find where the vamps stayed during the day by following them back to their hole at the end of the night, Dean caught Beth giving Cas a look, and Cas nodded in agreement before Beth crouched down in front of Rogue. “I have to go to work. Be good for Cas.” 

Rogue immediately grabbed ahold of Beth’s hand and started hugging it like a blanket against the side of her face, and Beth said, “You don’t have to be good for me to come back. I’ll come back even if you aren’t good. I just want you to be good, because it helps Cas.” Rogue looked a little unsure, but nodded, so Beth said, “We’re on the road, so what do we do?” 

Rogue pointed to her eyes and ears, and Beth smiled. “That’s right. We keep our eyes and ears open. Help Cas do that, okay?” Rogue looked at Cas and nodded, and then let Beth’s hand go, so Beth could grab a few things out of her weapons bag. Beth didn’t realize she had a shadow until Rogue ran into the back of her. She didn’t have a shadow because Rogue wanted to come too. She had a shadow, because Rogue wanted to talk to Dean. 

She walked around Beth and up to him, pointed up at Beth. “No Dad, tect Mom.” 

Beth rolled her eyes and muttered, “I can take care of myself,” while Cas came over to pick Rogue up. 

Rogue didn’t take her eyes off of Dean the entire time. It looked like she wanted an answer, so Dean said, “Yeah, okay. Me and Not Sam will protect her.” His word seemed good enough for her, because after that she pointed at something behind Cas that she wanted to go do. Kind of made this whole thing feel a little more real. Dean didn’t just have to make sure everyone walking out the door came back because of what they meant to him. He had to do it for her too.


	4. First Recon Mission in a Cruel World

They’d parked up the snow plow about 3 miles back, and they had another 2 to go to get where Bobby told them the bulk of the vamp army had been staying the last few weeks. Sam looked over at Dean when he heard him say, “I thought Cas was doing this.” 

He knew it. Dean hadn’t listened to a thing anyone had said all day. Dean had been off in La La Land watching Beth and Rogue instead. His niece seemed to have the ability to wrap anyone around her little finger in no time. She also seemed to have the ability to adapt pretty well in this kind of a world. She was even dealing with having impostors around who looked like her Dad and Uncle pretty well. From what Sam could tell, she was having a little harder time adjusting to her Mom being a hunter than he thought Beth realized until today maybe. 

“Cas and I are trading off nights. You get me tonight. I’m pretty sure you told Rogue, you’d protect me, while I was at work, so I’m guessing you know that . . . You just don’t want me to be here.” 

Dean looked at Beth’s attire. “Think you have enough for what we’re up against?” 

She had two bandoliers crisscrossed over her chest full of cartridges for her tranquilizer gun, a quiver loaded with bolts already dipped in Dead Man’s blood, her crossbow, a thigh-strap with her angel blade, and that’s what Sam could see. She probably had at least a couple of knives hidden on her somewhere and maybe a gun. 

“I find it easier if I just have everything I need at hand, so I don’t have to look through a bag. Normally, I’d have my first aid kit on me, but since it’s our first night back in a while, my Dad’s on-call.” Dean asked how many they could expect, and Beth said, “It’s hard to say. Bobby said the area is almost purple now, which I don’t think we’ve seen on that computer. Cas thinks it means there’s a really high concentration of them in a small area. That’s why we’re going in guerilla style, so we can kill as many as possible without being noticed, while also doing recon to find out where the Alpha is, but absolutely under no circumstances are we engaging him tonight.” Dean was listening to everything she said, like it was the first time he was hearing it, so maybe it was the first time he was hearing it, but Cas had already said most of that earlier. 

“Why aren’t we going after the Alpha tonight? If we kill him, they scatter, right?” 

Sam sighed. He had no idea where Dean had been for however long, but he should already know all this stuff. Sam decided to answer this one. “He’s the most powerful monster alive or dead that isn’t a Leviathan. He’s like Dracula with the flying, the strength of 20 demons combined, and has speed like lightning . . . Cas said he’s an almost perfect predator. We killed his mother, Eve, last month, so he’s probably not too happy about that. We need a plan when we find him before we go anywhere near him, because it’s going to take a lot of dead man’s blood to bring him down, and that won’t be easy . . . And if you’d watched that show past season 3 or listened to anything Cas said today, you’d know all of that.” 

Dean defended himself by claiming he did know all of that. Apparently, he’d just wanted to hear it again before they got there. Yeah, right. Dean hadn’t paid attention to anything Beth had said about this universe for the last year. Dean hadn’t paid attention, since they got here. Dean shouldn’t even be doing this until he got his head in the game.

The closer they got, the quieter they got. Sam felt like his every step was announcing their arrival because of the snow. They had a long way to go to get back to the truck Gabriel had sent here with Beth. He was starting to feel like he shouldn’t be out here either. He had no idea what to expect, so he had no idea if he was up for it. 

He tried reminding himself of what Gabriel said last night about how if he’d been able to fight his way out of Hell, he could do this too. Getting into that kind of mentality before they were in the thick of it was going to be hard, but he’d try. Now he just needed to keep in mind that he needed to be at that intensity, but stealthy and quiet. He could do this. He’d been a hunter his entire life. He’d been a hunter with Dean his entire life. Unlike in Hell, Dean could fight back. They could do this together, and Dean was built for this kind of a fight whether he was caught up to speed or not. 

About a mile out, Beth stopped and lifted the binoculars she had on a strap around her neck, so she could survey the area. Where she got those Sam had no idea, but they looked military grade and expensive. After flipping through a few settings, she handed the binoculars to Dean, so he could have a look. Whatever Dean saw made him snap to attention more. When he handed the binoculars to Sam, Sam saw why. 

The heat signatures of the wooded area in front of them revealed that the entire area was covered top to bottom in what he assumed were vampires. They were in the trees. They were on the ground. They were everywhere. He didn’t know how many there were before his family got carted off to another universe, but there had to be thousands of them now. This had to be just about every vampire that was still left alive in at least North America. He didn’t know about South America, but maybe it was all of the vamps from there too. 

Sam gave the binoculars back to Beth, and she pointed to him and indicated he should go right. She wanted Dean to stay in this position and hit them from the north, and she was apparently going around to the east. They were staying to the East. Sam remembered Cas saying that there was every possibility the vamps knew where the house was, because the house wasn’t too far from where they’d killed the vamp last night. What had that vamp even been doing there? The house was miles from here. Maybe it’d been a sentry? Maybe the vampires knew hunters were in the area if they found one dead and a house nearby that was warded against them. If that was the case, then maybe there were vamps dotted all along the eastern side of this camp if the vamps expected the hunters to try and hit the camp from the east. Did Bobby say something about these vamps being trailed along the East. Maybe that's why. It put Beth in the hottest spot. 

Sam knew this was the plan before they left, but the thought of separating now seemed like a bad idea. Apparently Dean did too, because he grabbed Beth’s arm to stop her from heading off on her own. She made the hand signals for what they were to do again. Dean disagreed, and Beth pointed back in the direction they’d come towards the truck. The message was pretty clear. If they didn’t want to do it her way, they could go back to the truck. 

Dean tried to compromise and signaled that he would take the east, and Sam started to think for the first time that maybe Dean had been listening to what Cas said, because it wasn’t separating that Dean didn’t want to do. It was Beth taking the east. Beth gave Dean a look, and then Dean took a step back, struggled with something, and nodded. She must’ve let him know what she was thinking. If she did, it was the first time in a long time, maybe since they’d been in Hell, that she’d done it. 

She signaled for them to hold until her signal, and then she signaled for them to get out on her second signal. Then she handed her binoculars to Sam, flipped her night vision goggles down, turned and headed off to the east, theoretically, so she could head a mile out and then head south to keep the perimeter as wide as possible until she went in for her approach. Dean watched her go, and then pulled out a pair of night vision goggles Sam didn’t even know Dean had out of his bag, exchanged them for the binoculars with Sam, and then indicated that Sam should get going. Sam guessed that Dean had a point. If this was the plan they were going with, they should all be in position at the right time, so he should probably go. 

This should be it. Sam was due west from the nest. His attention was on the trees surrounding him and on the ground around him, but it was also a mile to the east of him where the vast majority of vampires were. There weren’t any around him out here, or he hadn’t encountered any. He needed to stay here and get a good idea of the terrain. When Beth gave her signal, he was supposed to move towards the nest, and he didn’t want any surprises. 

Her signal to go was pretty simple. They all had two-way radios. When the light went green on his radio, it meant Beth was transmitting, but the plan wasn’t for her to say anything. It was just to let him know it was time to go towards the nest. He had the radio in his hand and within his line of sight at all times. He didn’t want to miss it. 

Her signal to get out would be a lot more noticeable and would draw attention onto her if a problem arose. If there weren’t any problems, they were staying out here until the sun came up and using the daylight to find the location of the Alpha. They were pretty sure that he was here, but if he was, he was being obscured by the other vamps on Bobby’s computer, and if he wasn’t, then Bobby hadn’t been able to find him yet with all of the other monster dots he had to search through on his computer screen. 

It took a lot longer than Sam had thought it would for the light to go green. He’d long past started to think that Beth was running into more problems than they were anticipating and had thought more than once that maybe they should abandon this, find her, and then get out. The only thing that kept him there was thinking that if he left, and the light went green, then he wouldn’t be where Dean and Beth needed him to be for a coordinated attack that required them to hit the nest from three different directions at once. 

Hitting the nest that way would thin out what each of them had to deal with individually, but if only one or two of them attacked, it would be a lot harder than if there three, so he had to stay put. Now he could see why they’d had to separate even if he hadn’t at the start of this. He supposed that questioning that had probably just been nerves. He had a job to do here, and after this much time thinking about it and seeing what he was up against, he thought he was ready . . . so long as Beth wasn’t in any serious trouble on her side of the nest.

Finally, after what felt like half the night, and maybe it was, the signal came, and Sam realized that he’d gotten to a point where he wasn’t expecting it to come even though he was ready. This was it. His first real battle in what had become his new life just yesterday. 

He put the radio away, grabbed his crossbow, and started to move forward, using the trees for cover. He already had his first targets picked out. If Dean and Beth were making their moves too, nothing had been noticed, or at least they hadn’t been on this side of the nest. That was the point, Sam guessed. 

Timing was everything. So was distance. He got to a place where he thought he could have enough cover to take 4 of the sentries out at roughly the same time. Then he just kept on shooting. Two on the far right, one on the ground, one in a tree, and two on the far left, one on the ground, and one in a tree. 

The two in the tree dropped roughly around the time the two on the ground fell to their knees. The ones falling from the tree drew the attention of others near them, but by then, Sam had already begun shooting them with arrows covered in dead man’s blood. If the vampires he shot were on the outer ring of the nest, like a bullseye, then the vampires in the ring a little bit closer to the nest noticed the ones on the outside going down, and that’s exactly what he wanted. 

To investigate, those vamps had to leave their posts. The more of them that did that, the more gaps there would be where they should’ve been, and as those gaps were filled, more gaps would open up in the middle. Beth and Dean doing the same thing should further widen those gaps, and prevent the entire army from heading Sam’s way. Things seemed to be going pretty well, so far. Now he needed to move to a different place without them knowing, so he could attack from an unexpected position and get close enough to start taking the heads off of some of the vamps that were already down before they started getting back up. He should have about half an hour.


	5. Vampire Telephone Netowrk

I’d been expecting it, because Bobby said it would be this way, but I hadn’t really anticipated that it would take this long. Their set up looked something like a comet with the eastern flank gradually tapering off as the tail. I had to find a point where I could manage the numbers solo, but that was miles away from where I needed to be when I signaled to Sam and Dean. The vampires along the eastern flank were really nothing more than scouts, much like the vamp that came at Sam, Dean, and Cas last night probably was. 

Until last night, I don’t think the vampires had had any problems, but after we moved into the neighborhood, they’d changed tactics. Their scouts came off of the north, south, and west, and had either been put to the east to bulk up the numbers here or in the south, the south being the easiest way into their camp. It’s a good thing we’d come in from the north, the opposite of easy. 

I’d say a sizable portion of their army had been placed to the south, and it was entirely hidden under the snow, which cooled their body temperatures and made the thermal imaging readings a little off, because their body temperatures could drop much lower than a human’s could, but you could still see them . . . barely. They would be ready for us tomorrow and would probably spread their numbers out along all four directions; north, south, east, and west, again but that would benefit us because it would thin their numbers out over a wider area instead of having them concentrated to one area that 3 people just could not manage. It also meant we had to take out as many as possible tonight when they weren’t quite ready for us. 

When I’d found my entry point, I climbed a tree half-mile to the north of the eastern flank and hopped from tree to tree as silently as I could until I got to within firing range of a vamp in a tree opposite me. The best way to do this and not alert the vamp on the ground was to shoot the one in the tree through the neck, so he was pinned to the tree and couldn’t make any real noise except for gurgling sounds until he passed out from the dead man’s blood. The vamp on the ground noticed the gurgling, but when he looked up into the tree, it looked like his buddy was still standing there on guard. Then I just had to wait until he wasn’t looking to jump to that tree, cut the head off of the vamp in the tree, take the arrow out of his neck, stab it through his chest, so he was pinned to the tree, and then put his head back on top of his shoulders, so he still looked like he was standing there more or less. It was hard to do quietly, but not impossible. 

I left the one on the ground alive and moved onto the next tree, because the vampires on the ground seemed to be the ones who communicated with the next batch of vampires in the game of monster telephone they were playing. If one of them from the groups further back got here to report no problems and found the one on the ground dead, it’d know something was wrong and keep on going to the next group of vamps and warn them. I wanted the ones actually passing the message along on the ground to think things were fine for as long as possible, because they could run along the ground a lot faster than I could get through the trees. 

Also, if the vampire on the ground was supposed to pass along his own message of things being fine, the monsters he was supposed to tell would be expecting him, and when he didn’t show, they’d know something was up. The message would get back to the nest faster than I could stop it or maybe even know about it, so this was the only way I could control things. If I saw that message coming down the line though, I was going to stop it and would have to give the signal for Sam and Dean to head back to the truck unless I was close enough to the nest for it not to matter. 

The closer I got to the nest, the larger the numbers there were in each group. They went from one vamp in a tree and one on the ground to maybe 3 in the trees and 5 on the ground, and then that grew to 5 or 6 in the trees and 10 or 15 on the ground. From what I could tell from where I was, the numbers only got a lot larger from here. The more there were standing around talking on the ground, the less likely they’d be to notice that the ones in the trees weren’t talking back anymore. So, maybe this was a good thing.

Unfortunately, it didn’t stay quiet for as long as I would’ve liked. I saw it coming from pretty far away. There was a runner heading to one group of vamps, and then they all looked up and tried to get the attention of the vamps in their trees. As soon as they saw that they were all dead, a runner from that group took off and ran to a closer group. It forced my hand before I was a mile out from the main group of trees, which is where we’d agreed we’d stay until I gave the signal to get closer. I was close, but not quite there, so I gave the signal for Dean and Sam to make their moves.

Then I started going back through the trees where I’d already been, so I could catch one of the runners between groups. I shot him using my crossbow and then as he stumbled, I jumped down on top of him, pulled my angel blade, as I rolled off of him, and then brought it down through his neck. Now that I was on solid ground, I could go back and take out the smaller groups of ground vamps that already knew something was up, so none of them could spread the word to the much larger groups of ground vamps closer to the army. I felt like I was going in the wrong direction, but hey, I was killing vamps, which was the goal, and I was keeping the main number of vampire troops from being alerted to the fact that they were under attack. 

Yes, the vampires in the larger groups would notice when their messenger from the group a little further away didn’t show up to report nothing was happening, but it would buy Sam and Dean the 6 or so minutes they needed to cover their mile and get close enough to start picking off the number of vamps from their sides of the perimeter. When I was sure I’d killed enough vamps on the ground to buy Sam and Dean that time they needed, I ran back towards where I’d jumped on the vamp and climbed that tree, so I could start heading back to where I’d been when I gave the signal. I had to catch up and do my part.

When I got to the outskirts of the main part of the camp, my goal was to get as far into the camp as possible. There’s now way I could do that from the ground, but I could from up here. I’d kill a couple of vampires in one of the trees, and then I’d go back to the tree I’d just been in, move to the right or left, leave a group of vampires in the next two trees, and then hit the vampires on the next tree. Once they caught on that I was killing the vampires in every other tree, I started choosing random trees, while working my way closer to the center in a demented game of Vampire Frogger. That only worked, because a lot of attention was on what was happening to the north and west. 

Sam and Dean were making massive waves, and I was taking advantage of that to get close enough to see if the Alpha was here. I didn’t see him when I got near the middle of the most heavily guarded part of the camp, but I did see where they were housing all of these vamps during the day. There was a mansion, and it had a lot of outbuildings, like barns and sheds and stables. If you included the outbuildings, there was more than enough space to house all these vamps. 

If the Alpha was here, he was in the main house. Now wasn’t the time to find out. We’d done what we came here to do today, which was get an idea of what we were looking at with regards to the monster army and chip away at their numbers. Coming back during the day wouldn’t really slow the Alpha down the way it would his children, but coming back during the day and taking out the vampires, outbuilding by outbuilding, would work at least once before they had to move. If we were ready when they went on the move, we could take out more. 

It was time to go, so I headed back towards what used to be their perimeter along the east. When I got there, I took the remote control sonic dog collar I’d had my Dad pick up for me after he told me I should probably come help Cas, Sam, and Dean, taped it to my radio, taped the transmitter button down, and then left it in a tree before I kept going. When I was almost out of range, I turned the dog collar on and smiled briefly when all of the vampires below me, clutched their ears and fell to their knees. 

The same thing should be happening to the vamps near wherever Dean and Sam were as long as Dean and Sam’s two-way radios were on. That was their signal to fall back to the truck. Now I just had to keep going until I got to a place where I could drop down and meet up with Sam and Dean. It just may not be where they thought it would be. I’d let them know where it was when I got a little further away. I needed to do something about those vampires I’d left alive along the eastern flank. We weren’t staying in that house another night. If I didn’t want the vampires trying to pick us off while we were on the move the way I thought we should do to them, I couldn’t leave vampires in their spy/telephone network alive to tell their Father we were leaving or where we went. I had Rogue to think about.

45-minutes later, I figured that Dean and Sam had enough time to get back to the truck, so I called Dean on the Sat phone I’d given him. 

_“Where the hell are you?”_

“Yeah. Hello to you too. Slight change of plan. I’m going to keep killing the ones spread out along the east before they can go wherever it is that they go to hide from the sun.” He immediately started arguing with me about how we had a plan and should stick to it, so I said, “I know. You’re right, but they have a spy network set up, and we need to dismantle it before we move house today. If they have one staying awake during the day, the way we have someone staying awake at night to keep watch, I don’t want them knowing where we go, because I don’t want them to make an attempt on Rogue. If you want to help, go back to where you guys saw that vamp last night, and start heading due west, so you can pick them off and meet me somewhere in the middle. They’ll be in the trees and on the ground.” He didn’t say anything to that, so I said, “If you do, I’ll tell you all about what I found at their compound when we get back.” 

It sounded like he was smiling when he said, “I don’t want something you were already going to do.” 

“What do you want?”

“I’ll let you know when I see you. Where are you?” 

“I’m about two miles out. I’m traveling by tree right now, but when their group numbers drop, and they get spaced out a little more, I’ll probably move to the ground, so I can go faster.” 

I thought he was going to leave it at that, but instead he asked how many were in the groups.

“Between 5 and 10 right now.” 

“So you’ve got 5 ½ miles to go, you’re traveling by tree, and you have more vamps on your side . . . better put a move on it if you wanna beat me to the half-way point.” He hung up before I could say anything to that. There is no way he was going to beat me. I had two miles on him, and he had to get all the way over to the other side and pick up the trail of vamps before he got started . . . but I did have more vamps to get through, and he had Sam with him. It might be close.

To be honest, by the time I did get to roughly the middle, I was pretty tired. It’s not like I was in Heaven or Hell where my body didn’t feel the effects of being tired, but it wasn’t just that. I think I was a little physically and mentally unfit for the kind of prolonged action this life required. I needed to start training again in the mornings and during my free time. Plus, my body was a few years older now, and I had more responsibilities than I did two days ago. I don’t think it was a problem before I got sucked into another timeline, because I was used to it, but it was kind of a problem now. 

There was definitely a massive change in going from being a single 28-year old hunter to a single 33-year old mother, hunter, and runner of a camp with 1000 kids overnight. I felt more responsible for Rogue than I did in the past too, because I guess I was kind of her only parent. Other than me, all she really had was Cas. It took a lot out of me after just a day. 

I don’t think I ever really gave Dean and Sam, but especially Dean, enough credit for everything they did for her in the past. He and Sam were essentially superheroes with how much they effortlessly did for her on top of everything else they had to do when it came to hunting and the camp and having to deal with my woe’s me and generally self-absorbed way of thinking when it came to Rogue. ‘Oh, I didn’t get the first 3 months with her.’ ‘Oh, I didn’t know who she or anyone else was when I got back.’ ‘Oh, I’ve been replaced, and she doesn’t want me to hold her.’ ‘Oh, I can’t do anything except stare at a shirt.’ Oh, shut up and get over yourself. You have a freaking daughter who needs you no matter what you think she thinks, and you’re part of a team that’s supposed to be raising her whether you know it or not. I’d been a sub-par mother before I went to the other timeline. I had to be a better one now.

I finished off the vamp that fell out of the tree in front of me and looked up to see if there were anymore. Didn’t look like it. Better keep going. It was almost dawn. I could see the sky in the horizon going from black to sort of purple and pink. I picked my pace up to something of a moderately fast jog in search of the next vampire watch post. I didn’t want any getting away and going to shacks or cabins near here, not that I couldn’t follow their tracks in the snow, but it’d take longer to track them down, track down the next ones, and the ones after that if they all didn’t just head back to the mansion for the day. If they did that, then they’d have to go through me.

By the time I got to the next watch post about a 3rd of a mile away, the very top of the sun was starting to come up over the horizon. Time was up. There was a vamp in the tree. I shot it with my crossbow. My crossbow was attached to me by a shoulder strap, so I dropped it, pulled my angel blade with my right hand and shot the vamp on the ground with a tranq dart using my left. The vampire on the ground took another couple of steps before its knees started to buckle, but by then I’d gotten close enough to finish it off. Following through on the swing, I did a half-spin to dodge around its falling body, took 2 steps to make it to the one that’d fallen out of the tree, landed on my knee as I brought my angel blade down through it’s neck, and took off at a run, while I reloaded my tranq gun. 

I only stopped when I heard, “Nice try, but we got here first,” out of the trees to my right. I breathed out a sigh of relief as Sam and Dean came out from behind a row of bushes. We did it. We wiped out the vampire telephone network, and now we could move on without them knowing where we went unless they followed the tracks in the snow from the plow. We needed to figure out how to keep that from happening, but first I had to figure out how to make myself walk the next 6 ½ miles.


	6. Wake Up Call

Cas came into the living room holding a bowl of fruit cocktail for Rogue’s lunch, but he didn’t see her anywhere. “Where’s Rogue?” Dean and Sam looked at each other and then around the room before they looked at Cas and shrugged. That child was becoming a handful. She was always disappearing and getting into things she shouldn’t even when all he’d done was turn his back on her for a second. 

He went on a room-by-room search for her, looking under furniture and in closets and wardrobes. Finally, he found her in Beth’s room and relaxed before backing out of the room to let them have some privacy. Rogue had at least partly listened to him. Despite Cas telling her to let Beth sleep, she’d gone into Beth anyway, but she’d curled up next to Beth to take a nap too. She was having a much more difficult time transitioning to Sam and Dean being different than anyone wanted to admit. It’s why she was trailing after Beth the way she normally did Dean. 

Cas could understand that, because it was something he was finding difficult to adjust to as well. The two men had not come back the same. What was worrying wasn't that they were novices now. It was the fact that they'd come back worse than they’d been when he met them at roughly the same age a few years ago. Dean’s mood swings were erratic. He no longer put others ahead of himself . . . Chuck had said that for the last 6 months they’d been gone or half a day, depending on how you looked at it, Dean had strictly been hunting for the kills, not the saving people . . . saving people no longer held any real meaning for him anymore. He’d become selfish and cold-blooded, or that’s the way Cas took it, and so far he hadn’t seen anything to dispel him of that notion. 

Sam mindlessly followed Dean everywhere . . . Sam’s loyal devotion to Dean annoyed Cas. It’s like all the hard work Sam had put into being able to making the right decisions on his own had evaporated. They were not their own men anymore. They relied on each other more than they ever had, and at times it was like both of them thought Cas and Beth were the enemies. What happened when Beth forgot Dean and their life together was similar to what was happening now, but Cas thought it was different too, because Beth had not been so fundamentally different as a person.

A couple of brooding hours later, Cas heard Beth talking upstairs and looked at his watch. 3 ½ hours was as good as they could probably expect out on the road. When she came down holding Rogue’s hand a few minutes later, she still looked tired, but smiled when he handed her the bowl of fruit cocktail for Rogue. She told Cas that he could get some sleep if she wanted. Sam and Dean were already sleeping on the couch and floor. He was looking forward to getting some sleep too after a long night of keeping watch over Rogue. Maybe it would improve his mood to take a nap. He actually liked sleeping even if he didn’t like that he had to take time out of his day to do it. 

Going upstairs to find a room to call his own, Cas decided on the room to the right. It was across from Beth and Rogue’s room, and right by the stairs, so he would be able to hear them if something happened while he was asleep. He doubted Dean and Sam would be reliable help in the event of an emergency. It’d depend on Dean’s mood. 

It seemed as though he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. It was the smell of food coming from downstairs, and Rogue saying his name that woke him up. Maybe Rogue might’ve shaken him a couple of times too, because she did it again just before his eyes opened. The light was dim outside, like it was already becoming night. He’d overslept. 

He immediately sat up, and Rogue pointed to the door saying, “Mom.” Beth sent her to wake him up. That was nice. So was her letting him sleep a little longer. He picked Rogue up to help her get down the stairs. Everyone was awake and preparing their dinners on the hot plate. Beth had something on there for him too and said he needed to eat something hot before he went out all night to fight vampires. When he saw that it was macaroni and cheese, his mood improved even more. Out of the hot food he’d tried that came from a can or a box, this was his favorite.

When they were done eating, it was almost time to go. They wouldn’t be gone as long as they were last night. Tonight they were just going to see how the vampires responded to their attack. If there were anymore long lines of vampires spreading out from the main group, they were killing those, and they were looking to see whether the vampires redistributed the vampires that Beth had seen to the south. Tomorrow they would strike when the vampires were sleeping during the day. Cas wondered how many had been killed last night and how many more they had to go. Bobby said this morning that the area was still purple, but maybe the size of the circle had gotten a little smaller. 

Before they left, Beth insisted on calling Bobby again to make sure there hadn’t been any changes. Apparently the area was no longer purple. It was red, and there long lines of vampires heading out in all 4 directions. Beth thought they should change their plans. “Even if they spread out a little more, it should still look purple if it was earlier. Are we sure that the computer can pick them up when they’re under the snow? Bobby didn’t say anything about them extending into the south yesterday. All he said was that it looked like a comet with the head roughly where the mansion is and the tail extending out to the east? Maybe by trying to trick the thermal imaging equipment, they’re actually tricking the computer, so it looks like there are fewer of them? What if they’re hiding under the snow near the lines that look like easy pickings, because they know we’ll try and hit those? It could turn into an ambush.” 

Was it possible for the vampires to hide from his computer that way? It was possible. The hybrids didn’t show up on the computer all that well. Who knew what vampires hiding under the snow and dropping their body temperatures would do? 

Stepping forward, Sam said, “Yeah, but we still need to see if that’s what they’re doing, right?” 

Beth held her breath for couple of seconds and then quickly countered, “Do you though? What if part of the reason they’re fanned out like that is so they can find out where we are now? I spent all afternoon with Rogue driving up and down every road for probably 20 square miles, so they should be suitably confused as to where we are. They’re expecting an attack tonight, but they don’t know where we are, so they don’t know which direction it’ll come from. We could’ve attacked during the day today. We didn’t. What if we don’t do anything tonight and lull them into a false sense of security before we hit them tomorrow at noon.” 

Dean looked annoyed for some reason. “Yeah, but we already have a plan. Is this something you do here, change your mind on plans while you’re in the middle of a mission or right before you leave to do one?” 

Beth glanced at Cas to back her up as she answered, “Nothing is set in stone. You have to be fluid and adapt as situations change . . . Plans never work out the way you want them to work out. Like when we went to take down Vegas. We had a plan going in there. We had back up plans too. All of those went out the window when you locked me in the vault of the Luxor, so you could face Sam yourself and prove to me that he was beyond saving. Cas and I had a plan in place for what to do when we got to the penthouse before we even left Wisconsin, but because there were angel wards up in the penthouse and you were in there, that plan had to be adjusted. Or when you were going to go with a group of hunters to save the kids in the back of the trucks leaving Vegas, you found out there was a solid wall of monsters that were starting to circle the city and all of the exits out of there. You came up with a plan at the last second to get the monsters away from the main roads, so no kids would be lost, and so the trucks with the hunters could get out and follow the convoys. It worked. You got dosed by a djinn and then a bunch of vetalas, and then you were out for a day or two, which obviously wasn’t a part of the plan, so Cas had to improvise by learning to drive, taking out the first trading post himself, transporting the kids he saved from there to the buses where they would be safe, and then driving after the rest of the convoy until you woke up.” 

“Sounds to me like the guy you’re talking about is an idiot.”

“Or maybe that guy isn’t so rigid. You never used to be either. You always used to improvise on hunts, and I seem to remember you adapting to anything I did on a hunt once upon a time too.” 

Before Dean could respond, Rogue, who was watching the entire discussion, went up to Dean and punched him in the leg, which immediately took all of Beth’s attention. She went over and turned Rogue away from Dean, so she could get Rogue to focus on her when she crouched down in front of her. “Mom . . . grrr?” 

“Yes. I’m mad. What did your Dad say when you hit Lily?”

Rogue looked down at her feet and said, “Hit . . . tect.”

“That’s right. You –“

Rogue pointed back at Dean and said, “No Dad . . . grr . . . tect Mom.” 

Beth slumped. “You were trying to protect me from him, because he was mad at me?” 

Rogue nodded, and Beth muttered, “I don’t know what to do here.” 

She looked to Cas for help, so Cas said, “She’s too young to know what is a real threat and what isn’t?” 

Beth nodded, like that gave her an idea before she looked at Rogue. “Your Dad was right. Don’t hit people just because you’re mad at them. You only hit them to protect yourself or somebody else.” She ignored Sam laughing at that and added, “But you don’t know when somebody needs to be protected, so ask me first.” Rogue nodded, so Beth said, “Now I want you to tell Dean you’re sorry.” 

Rogue gave her a very sad face, and looked like she was about to cry, but nodded, before she looked up at Dean. Taking a deep breath, she then wrapped her arms around one of Dean’s legs to give him a hug. Beth stood up and glanced at Dean before saying, “She’s learned a lot more words than I ever thought she knew, but sorry isn’t one she knows yet. I think this is the best you’re going to get in the way of an apology for now.” 

Dean awkwardly patted Rogue on the head and told her not to worry about it, and then Rogue immediately turned and wrapped her arms around Beth’s leg. “It’s okay. You made a mistake, but after that you did the right thing. I’m not mad anymore.” 

Holding onto Beth’s leg a little tighter, Rogue said, “Want hand,” so Beth let her hold her hand, and looked at Sam and Dean.

“So, what are you guys going to do? It’s really not my decision. I’m not the one going.” 

Looking a little confused, Dean said, “Uh, we could maybe leave it a couple of days. Might make them think we disappeared, and then we can take out a couple of barns instead of one if you really don’t think they know where we are right now.” He looked at Sam to see what he thought, and Sam shrugged, so Dean looked at Cas, and Cas said that was okay with him. Then Dean glanced at Rogue and said, “You guys have any whiskey in this universe, or –“ 

Beth said there was some in her clothes bag upstairs if he wanted to go find it, so he left to go do that, while Beth asked Rogue if she wanted to read a book, and Cas realized that now he was actually the one helping her raise Rogue. He’d been responsible for Rogue the last 2 weeks, but now he was the one helping take care of her while the others slept, and now he was the one Beth turned to for advice on situations like the one that just happened. It was sad, but necessary . . . at least until Dean and Sam remembered who they were. To take his mind off of it, Cas asked Sam if he wanted to play poker. That surprised Sam, but Cas was good at poker even if he didn’t know what they were thinking now that he was human.


	7. Rebuilding the Team

“Hello? . . . Oh, hey Stephen . . . I completely forgot. See, I - . . . They told you . . . No, I haven’t lost my mind again . . . Yes, 13 years . . . in the past . . . No, I haven’t gone soft . . . Hardest thing? . . . Uhh, trekking through Dante’s version of Hell . . . Yeah, it was nothing like what I told you Crowley did with the place . . . Something like 30 years . . . I don’t know. Think I look the same. I haven’t aged 30 years anyway. It was only 3 months in normal time, and I spent my 28th birthday there . . . Now I look like me again . . . I don’t know how long we’re going to be here. I think every vampire that’s left in the western hemisphere is here. They know if they don’t make a stand against the Leviathan, the Leviathan are going to kill everything, but we can’t . . . I know I said I’d bring you in on the bigger stuff, but I thought you guys were taking care of hybrids on the West Coast and - Oh, hey, Pamela . . . I’m fine . . . Cas is fine . . . Dean and Sam are- . . . What? No. That’s - . . . Okay, you’re right. They’re about 5 years younger and don’t remember anything about anything, but they are up to it . . . No, I’m not ready to let anyone know that until after we get rid of this army. I don’t want all of the camps to start panicking. Maybe if we get rid of this army before we tell them, then everybody will be able to see that Dean and Sam are just younger, not incompetent . . . No, we don’t need . . . She’s not handling it very well at all. She’s confused, and she misses her Dad, and it’s coming out as anger and being clingy with me . . . No, you guys stay there and do the poker tournament. We’ll be . . . I guess it doesn’t have to be held there just as long as it’s held, but . . . Yeah, it would speed things up if . . . but it doesn’t feel right . . . I – Okay. Talk to my Dad and see what he thinks, then take a vote with the others. We’re 18 miles northeast of where we were the last time he was here.”

Dean closed his eyes and pretended he was still asleep as Beth came in the front door of the house. As soon as she was gone again, he looked over at Sam, and Sam was looking back at him from the other couch. “What do you think that’s about?” 

Sam shrugged before he looked the way Beth had gone. “Think if we want to find out we should probably ask. Whatever it is has her worried.” 

Dean nodded and slowly sat up to find Rogue pretending to sleep on the floor next to his couch. At least it looked like she was pretending to sleep, because even though she was lying on her stomach and looked like she was asleep, her eyes were open. “Nice try. You’re not fooling anyone though. Gotta close your eyes to make it look real.” She turned her head to look up at him, and then laid her head back down, but didn’t close her eyes. “What’s she doing?” 

Watching her, Sam said, “She was at the window a few minutes ago hiding under the curtains and ran over here just before Beth got the call. I don’t think she wanted Beth to know she was watching her.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because Rogue and Castiel are playing hide and seek, and Beth waved at her through the window, so she thought Beth was going to blow her cover. Now she thinks you’re going to blow her cover and is trying to decide the best course of action to take: Stay there, go back to where she was, or find somewhere new to hide.” Dean looked over to find Gabriel standing there just as Rogue got to her feet and flung herself at him.

“Isn’t she a little young to be playing that game at all, let alone strategizing that way?” 

Gabriel picked Rogue up before answering Sam’s question. “Castiel doesn’t know they’re playing hide and seek. He just thinks she’s disappeared again.” When it was obvious that wasn’t enough of an answer for Sam, Gabriel added, “She thinks it’s funny to make him worry. She has her Mom’s sense of humor. When Beth was this age, she used to do the same thing, except she caused more mayhem. She used to get into to my weapons trunk and throw my weapons all over the room until there was enough room for her to fit inside, or she’d knock over holy oil I had hidden behind the couch, think it was funny and go looking for more, so she could pour it all over the house, and she used to take off outside to hide for hours; rain, snow or shine . . . one time she stole a tube of toothpaste and ate the entire thing in one of her hiding spots. It made her really sick, so she didn’t do it again, but she did start getting into salt I had hidden around the house and ate that by the handful. Beth did those kinds of things until she got old enough to start reading on her own and going to school. If Rogue is starting in on it now, then we all have a long road ahead of us.” 

Sam watched Rogue and said, “I have to ask. If Beth was that smart, and Rogue is that smart . . . is it because of you?” 

Was Sam addressing the angel issue? Dean thought that was off limits, or it seemed to be any time he brought it up. Looking at Rogue, Gabriel answered, “I don’t know . . . I know the ritual to create a psychic vampire requires the soul of a nephilim, because a human soul couldn’t survive it, and I know that they had to take half of Beth’s soul while she still had her grace, because her grace was what made her soul strong enough for the procedure, but after they took her grace, there shouldn’t have been any of me left. Sometimes I think there is though. I think that’s why she was strong enough to survive Heaven as a human, because I don’t think she could’ve done that on willpower alone. Maybe some of whatever it is that she got from me got passed onto Rogue. She’s not quite as advanced as Beth was, but if she’s starting to speak in sentences, then she’s not far behind . . . and intelligence isn’t just passed on from the mother, or at least it isn’t in girls. She’s half-Dean’s, and he’s not an idiot either even though he likes to pretend like he is.” 

Glancing at Dean, Gabriel added, “You need to use your brain now, and if you don’t know what’s happening around here, you need to fake it ‘til you make it, or you’re could be setting your family up for some serious trouble. The hunters want to come help with the vampires. If they see that you don’t know what you’re doing, then their opinion of you will drop, and if that happens, then it could put Beth, Cas, you, Sam, me, and Rogue in danger. Their respect for you and opinion that you and Beth know what you’re doing better than they do is what protects Beth and everyone close to her from the hunters falling prey to the negative consequences of Beth’s connection to God.”

“You mean they’ll start to be like Gordon Walker?” 

Gabriel thought about the example and said, “Worse. They don’t have anything to hold them back from doing whatever they want here. I’m picking up a time that you remember her telling you what happened with Bobby. That’s more likely to be the case.” 

Dean nodded to let Gabriel know he understood, and Sam wanted to know what they were talking about. Dean told him he’d tell him later and stood up. “So, what do I have to do to be more like him?” 

Despite everything that had happened, Gabriel still seemed willing to help him. “You can start by making your team look more like a team. This morning you should train with Beth. She just finished her run, so she should be good to go. Castiel needs to sleep. Sam can call Bobby and find out what the vampires have been up to over the last 48 hours, so he can start figuring out patterns of behavior during different times of the day. I’ll watch Rogue. Then this afternoon you can train with Castiel, and Sam can train with Beth. Tomorrow morning, you’re going to go tackle one of those vampire barns together. If you can get through that, then I’ll go back and send the other hunters here. I told them to watch the camp, while I went on a shopping spree. The kids are out of things to make cupcakes for their birthdays and few other things.” 

In slight confusion, Sam said, “And that won’t seem suspicious at all? They ask you if they can be sent here, and you disappear to get cupcakes, cupcakes that I’m sure you can make just by snapping your fingers?” 

“Are you kidding me? If I start snapping my fingers and giving those kids whatever they want whenever they want it, they’ll never leave me alone. Besides, it’s better for them to see some time went into making them something for their birthdays, since that’s all they get. And the hunters hadn’t gotten around to asking me to send them here yet. That’s one of the benefits of being able to read minds and know which direction things are going before the thought occurs to them.” 

Sam looked like he wasn’t convinced by that, but it wasn’t for the reason Dean thought. “So, all they get for their birthdays is a cupcake?” 

Beth answered that one. “Yeah, they get to decide what kind it is; vanilla, chocolate, swirl, strawberry, blueberry, whatever, and they get to decide what kind of icing they get and the toppings, and it’s just for them. They get hot chocolate too, but they get that on bonfire nights when we’re doing star charts, so that’s a little less special. And they don’t have to do their homework on their birthdays.” She was leaning against the doorway into the kitchen. Dean hadn’t had a chance to see her when she went past a few minutes ago, but he thought she looked good. 

Sam turned to look at Beth too, but he appeared to have woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. “No presents? Not even any ice cream?” 

Sighing, Beth said, “I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but there are 1000 of them, so at least one or two have birthdays every day of the year. We don’t have time to go out and get them all presents when we also have to make sure they have enough to eat, teach them in school, and go out to kill the monsters that want to kill them. They love that they have somewhere warm to stay, clothes to wear that aren’t threadbare, a roof over their heads, a school to go to Monday through Friday, and beds to sleep in instead of the floor. All 1000 of them are orphans, except for Rogue. A cupcake is a pretty big deal, and the farms in Wisconsin are a little busy starting up their indoor farming facilities, so they can finally start growing some grain crops to feed the animals and us. Learning how to scale up their milk and cheese production has been an ongoing process, so making ice cream hasn’t even entered into the list of things they should start producing . . . yet.” 

Sam looked annoyed by that for some reason, so Dean changed the subject. “So, I guess you and me are gonna be training this morning.” 

Beth shifted her focus to him and gave him a little nod. “Yeah, I’ll just go tell Cas he can get some sleep, and then I’ll be out.” She’d heard a lot more of what they’d said than he’d thought she had. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or not, but she seemed to move around a lot quieter in this life.

\-----------------

“You want me to what?” They’d already been using their crossbows for stationary and moving target practice all morning, and they’d done 50 pushups every 10 shots even though they hadn’t missed any. Thank God she didn’t want to do target practice with their guns, because she didn’t want to give away their location to the vamps. He hated pushups, and something told him that he would’ve had to do them after every 10 shots with a gun too.

Beth looked at the set up she’d made earlier this morning and said, “This,” before she took a few steps back to get a running start, used a stack of crates to push off of with her right foot to get to a higher position on a stack of crates to the left, pushed off of those with her left foot to get a little higher so she could grab onto a rope that was hanging off of a beam on top of the big red barn. She climbed all the way to the top, used the beam to pull herself up, and then ran along the roof of the barn to the back, and he guessed either jumped or climbed down the other side. He hadn’t had a chance to look at the set up back there. 

Then he saw her running back along the roof of the barn 2 minutes later. When she got back to the beam, she used it to climb down onto the rope, scaled down that, and then drop down to the ground out of breath. “I’m a little shorter than you, so you shouldn’t have to do as much to get to the rope. We'll do this up and over and back three times, and then we can do something else.” 

Why the hell would he do any of that? “Think I’m calling in that thing I wanted for meeting you halfway the other night.” 

Beth’s smile fell a little. She looked disappointed and then sighed. “Okay . . . two more times, and I’ll be done. If you want to wait over there you can.” Then she took off towards the rope again. 

“Wait! Why are we doing this?” 

Beth grabbed ahold of the rope and pulled her body up onto it while she grunted out, “I’m out of shape. I need to push myself.” That was insane. She wasn’t out of shape, or she couldn’t have done what she just did or was doing now.

When she came back the next time she was even more drained, so he had time to stop her before she went to do it again. “You don’t have to do this to prove anything to me or –“ 

Beth looked at the rope and said, “I need to get it back. I’m struggling to find it.” 

She went to take off, and he stopped her again. “Find what?” 

Breathing out a heavy sigh, she answered, “Me,” before she ran towards the boxes and went up the rope again, a lot slower, but she did it and was back a few minutes later.

“What do you mean, you?” 

Beth grabbed a bottle of water and twisted the cap off, saying, “I don’t know if it’s going from being 28 to 33 overnight or if I got soft in our other life, but I’m finding it difficult to get back to where I was mentally and maybe physically before we left.” 

Oh. He hadn’t thought about the difference between a 28 and a 33 year old. “I don’t know. Looked like you were plowing through those vamps the other night without any problems.” Hadn’t really thought that there was anything graceful about killing before he and Sam watched her take those two vamps out. He’d been playing it over and over in his head the last couple of days. When she’d killed those angels in Cold Oak, she’d been amazing; really fast, confident, never lost focus, clinical, precise, kind of scary in a sexy kind of way. That wasn’t what happened with the vamps. There’d been something about the way she’d been with them that was like watching the poetry of death in motion.

After taking a drink, Beth said, “It’s not just that. It’s the kids in the camp, and Rogue. It’s the other hunters and camps and killing off more monsters, so we can better the odds we have of finding more survivors. And it’s not knowing how long we’re going to be here before we have our next meeting with God.” 

That wasn’t all of it though, was it? He was part of it too. She needed him to step up, and he wasn’t doing it, or when he was, it was at the wrong times or in the wrong ways. He didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing here, and it was obvious. The other night before they’d split up to go around the vampire camp, she’d told him that if he wanted to be in charge, he had to earn it. Well, she hadn’t said that, but she’d let him know that’s what she was thinking. 

It was the first time she’d done that since he’d been in Hell, and him being able to hear what she’d thought told him that even after all this time, he still wanted to know what she thought, or he wouldn’t have heard anything, because the listening had to come from him. Last night she said that he was too rigid and that even though he was the same guy he was when they were growing up, he hadn’t been rigid then. What was the difference between then and now? The only thing he could come up with was that then he was with her, and now he wasn’t . . . and then her daughter punched him, because she thought he was being too threatening to Beth. That isn’t the way he wanted to come across at all. 

Now he was doing it again, maybe not being threatening or whatever, but fighting against what Beth was saying or doing without trying to understand it first, just because. “Make you feel better if you can see how much I suck at this even though I’m younger than you?” 

Beth gave him a brief smile and said, “You won’t suck at it, but it’ll give me at least a 10-minute break, so that’ll make me feel better.” 

_10 minutes? It took her over 20._ Dean looked up at the rope and the roof of the barn and thought she was being too generous. “All right. Time me.” She glanced at her watch, and he guessed that was his cue to go. If he could do this in under 17, he’d consider that a win.


	8. Don't Look Back

Sam actually felt pretty good about this. He felt prepared after going over things with Bobby yesterday. They’d focused on the differences between what the vampires did during the day and what they did at night. 2 o’clock in the afternoon seemed like the perfect time to strike. Yesterday at 1 o’clock in the afternoon was when the vamps went back to being a purple blob on the screen. Before that they’d been red, which meant that they’d been more spread out and maybe more on guard until they figured that nobody was coming. Then they must’ve all gone back to their barns to sleep for the rest of the day. They seemed to have woken back up between 7 and 8, and by the time the sun went down, they’d already gotten into the cross pattern again the way they’d been the night before last. Beth might’ve been right about that being their way of trying to find out which direction they came from when they came back again. He’d called Bobby at 1 to find out if the vamps had gone back to being purple, and Bobby had said they were, so they were heading out now to take care of it. 

Sam also felt pretty good about this, because Gabriel was staying with Rogue, so Beth and Cas were both coming too. With Beth and Cas both here, it should make this go more smoothly. The plan was to be in and out of the vampire camp as fast as possible. They were just checking to see how the vampire camp was set up, finding the smallest group of vampires, taking out as many of that group as they could, and then retreating before things got too hot for them to stay. Vamps could go out in the sun. They just preferred not to do it so they didn’t get sun burned. As soon as the first vamps woke up, the rest would come running.

They pulled up to the west of the vampire encampment at around a quarter to 1. Beth reminded them to keep an eye out for any places where vamps might be hidden under the snow, like land mines. “If they’re under the snow, they can stay out in the sun, because the snow should keep them from being burnt.” 

That knocked Sam’s confidence a little, but it was more of a warning of what was possible, not what was probable. He doubted vamps would like being buried under snow anymore than a human would even if hypothermia wouldn’t kill them. Plus, if the vampires being under the snow obscured Cas’s computer, the computer shouldn’t be picking them up as a purple zone. It should be red . . . unless being under the snow wasn’t hiding them, and Beth’s theory was wrong. It was hard for him to know. He never saw the computer, so he didn’t know how it worked or really what it did. 

Sam knew Beth was hoping they were under the snow for a couple of reasons. One, she didn’t want the Alpha Vamp to disappoint her on his battle strategy. She considered him to be a foe that deserved a lot of respect. Cas agreed with her and said that to not give the Alpha the respect he deserved would be to their detriment. 

The other reason Beth was hoping they were under the snow was because she thought that if the hidden army emerged from the snow, the sun would benefit the 4 humans, and they could kill more vampires than if they went into the camp and only killed a few vampires in one of the small outbuildings. Sam was fine with it if all they were able to do today was kill a few, because he was considering this fight to be more like death by 1000 cuts instead of a victory achieved with one blow. It was the safer option.

They got to the main grounds of the camp without tripping over any vampires, so things seemed to work out on that front, but there were vampires acting as guards all the way around the camp. They looked human. They had their hoodies pulled up to block them from the sun, sunglasses for the same reason, and were wearing gloves, but in these conditions a human would too. They were also sticking to the shadows, but again humans would too if they wanted to give off the illusion that the camp was unguarded. 

There were maybe 20 vampires along each side of the camp, so 80 in total. Dean signaled that he wanted the 4 of them to split up and go to opposite sides of the camp. They would each be responsible for bringing down all the guards on their side of the camp using the dead man’s blood, and then after the vampires were all down, they could be killed. 

That made sense to Sam. If one of the guards noticed other guards were missing, then they’d raise the alarm, so the only way to prevent that alarm from being raised was to incapacitate all of them first and then kill them. If they just killed the guards, Sam thought they’d be doing all right. Anything they killed after that would be a bonus. Beth and Cas agreed with Dean’s plan, and they all 4 split off to go to their respective sides of the camp. They’d start firing in 30 minutes and meet back here when they were done.

Sam got to his side along the east with about 5 minutes to spare, crossbow at the ready. There was quite a large distance between guards, maybe 75 yards. That should make this a little bit easier to do without the others noticing even if it was the middle of the afternoon. 

As the 30-minute mark hit, Sam shot the first vampire on the northern most side of his line through the neck. Beth had said something about that keeping them from being to raise the alarm the other night. It seemed to work, so Sam reloaded on his way to the next vamps. Staying in the shadows, so he wouldn’t be spotted, he took his next shot when he had it, and moved onto the next. Each one he shot through the neck, thereby preventing them from being able to call out, made his confidence grow. Maybe they really could get into the camp today to kill more than the 80 they were killing now. He wondered how much of a difference that would make to Bobby’s computer. Maybe tomorrow, this army would only show up as red. That’s what he’d been hoping for the last time they were here, and that hadn’t happened, but maybe this time, it would.

As soon as he was done with his row, Sam grabbed his machete and started in on the unpleasant task of killing the vampires. Seeing their faces in the daylight, he felt a little sorry for them. Maybe some of them had been vampires for a while, but maybe some of them had been traded to the monsters in one of those people trading places. Then after they were turned into monsters, they’d been forced to do whatever the Alpha Vampire wanted them to do, because he had control over them. For those vampires, it was a sad end to a sad life.

He was the last one back to their rendezvous point, but that was because he’d had the furthest to go. Feeling a mixture of emotions, including sadness at the end of the vampires he’d just had to kill, something of a sense of accomplishment if it meant they were able to continue to cut down on the number of vampires in this camp, and apprehension at the unknown as they entered the camp, he followed Beth and Dean to the first outbuilding that looked like a stable. Beth couldn’t see through the windows, but he, Cas, and Dean could. This one was a no-go. Not only was it covered from top to bottom with sleeping bodies, but the layout was bad. There were too many hidden places the vamps could go to hide, too many shadows, and too many exits for the 4 of them to cover. He glanced at Dean, and Dean was shaking his head at Beth, so it looked like Dean agreed that they’d have to find another building to attack.

It soon became apparent that there were a lot of places they weren’t going to be able to clear today. The mansion was out if there were as many vampires crammed into it as there were in each of the outbuildings. The other stables were out for the same reason the first one was. So were the barns, well all of them except for the pole barn that only had one main door at the front, and a couple of windows at the sides, and one of the sheds that looked like a smaller version of the pole barn and had fewer vamps. The shed was his vote. In a move that surprised him, Beth agreed. He’d thought she wanted to kill as many as possible today. She was a lot more cautious than he’d thought she’d be based on what he’d seen in their other life. 

Dean wanted to hit the barn, so it looked like it was down to Cas to either tie them up or make the deciding vote. He went with Dean and then looked to Beth to make the deciding vote. If that wasn’t a play to keep Dean happy and still go with the shed, Sam didn’t know what was. Beth went with the shed, and Sam wasn’t entirely sure that Dean caught what had just happened.

When they got back to the shed, Sam had another look inside through one of the windows. It was a pretty big shed. There had to be at least 200 vampires in there. Beth had a look at the building again and pointed to herself and Cas as going in through the two windows. She wanted Dean and Sam to stand at the two doors, so they could stop any from getting out. 

Dean’s lips pursed in frustration before he turned away from her and took a couple of breaths to calm down. As soon as he had, Dean faced Beth again, pointed at the two of them, and indicated they would be the ones going in through the windows. He wanted Cas and Sam to watch the doors. Beth glanced at Cas to see if he was okay with that, and Cas shrugged, so Beth nodded, and headed for the window further down to get into position and wait until the others were ready at their posts.

Sam didn’t know when Dean and Beth went into the shed, but he knew when they were about to go in, because smoke started streaming out through the cracks around the door. Or he assumed the smoke was from Dean and Beth, because as far as he knew this wasn’t part of the plan. He wondered if Dean had known about it. Maybe something was wrong. Maybe this smoke was coming from the vamps. Maybe – 

He heard shrieking and screams start coming out of the shed and split his attention between the door of the shed and keeping an eye on their surroundings. That’s when he got the idea to block the door. If he did that, he could buy Beth and Dean more time to kill as many as possible before vamps started pouring out into the relative safety of the outdoors. He could also keep more of his attention on their surroundings if he didn’t have to worry about killing vampires trying to flee . . . except he didn’t have anything to keep the door shut; no chains, no wooden planks, nothing. He had him, so that’s what he used. 

As the door started to open, he threw his bodyweight against it to keep it shut, mindful of the fact that the vamps were probably strong enough to break through the door if they wanted, but they’d have to get enough room to do that, and he suspected that with more and more vamps trying to get out, they’d start piling up on top of one another, which would keep them from having enough room to move their arms at all, let alone the room needed to use their arms to break through the door. Now he just had to worry about how long he could keep the door shut with the weight against it from the other side increasing all the time. 

That’s when he got another idea. Searching through the weapons bag over his shoulder, Sam found a couple of small hatchets. He jammed them under the door to keep it shut and was a little hesitant about whether or not that would be enough, but he didn’t have time to test it. The other vamps from other parts of the compound would be coming soon if they weren’t already on their way. He didn’t see any from this side of the shed, but that didn’t mean they weren’t coming from one of the other sides, he couldn’t see. 

With that in mind, Sam slowly stepped away from the door, and it seemed to hold. He went to the side of the shed Cas was on and didn’t see any vampire reinforcements coming from that side of the compound either. What he did see was that Cas had already taken 6 or 7 vampire heads and was taking more anytime they tried to run out the door. The bodies were starting to pile up and tripping other vampires trying to escape. The more that fell, the more the bodies were doing to achieve what Sam had by jamming the hatchets under the door. This exit wouldn’t be an exit for much longer. Cas seemed like he had this under control, so Sam went around to the side of the shed where the windows were to keep a look out. 

There was still nothing in the way of reinforcements. He wasn’t sure why, but that unsettled him, and then he saw movement out of the corner of his eye in the woods. The vamps weren’t going to come to help these vampires. They were going to block off the way out of here. He needed to grab Dean and get them out of here now.

Sam immediately went to the window Dean had gone through to look for his brother, but couldn’t see anything in there through all the smoke, so he tried yelling to get his brother’s attention. Instead of Dean, he got a couple of vampires, whose gruesome, fanged faces got way too close to his. He jumped back, and one of the vampires started to crawl out of the window, so he cut its head off and the other one pulled its body out of the way, so it could have a chance, and received the same fate. 

As soon as that one was dead, Sam tried calling for Dean again, and this time, he got Dean. “They’re not coming. They’re going to the woods to block our way out of here.” 

Dean looked behind him and then at Sam before he said, “Beth’s got it. If you want us to get out of here faster, I need you to get in here and help.” 

Seriously? Sam nodded, and Dean disappeared back into the smoke, so Sam hopped up and in through the window feet first. It looked like the vampires that hadn’t been knocked out with dead man’s blood were piled against the door he’d blocked or trying to get past Cas. Dean was decapitating the vamps in the pile against the door and pulling their bodies off of the pile to get to the next ones down, so Sam started killing the vampires that were already knocked out on the other side of the shed. He got mixed up a couple of times on the ones that were already dead and ones that weren’t, so he started tossing the heads out the window, so it’d be clearer. 

Maybe 7 minutes later, there wasn’t much movement left in the shed, and Sam was sure that the ones on this side were definitely all dead. Dean was looking around to make sure there weren’t any hiding in and among the bodies, and Cas said they should go. Dean didn’t question it. He just nodded for Sam to head for the windows, and the two of them hopped back out together. Cas handed Sam his hatchets and said they couldn’t leave anything behind that would make tracking them easier, and the three of them took off running to the southwest corner of the compound away from where the rest of the outbuildings and mansion were. Sam had no idea why they were going this way, but it’s the way Dean was going, so that was good enough for him.

They got to the trees, and Dean used his crossbow to shoot a vamp that ran at them from the right and then pulled his machete as another one came sprinting towards them from the same direction. Dean didn’t have to kill that vampire, because it started stumbling, fell to its knees, and then onto its face. 

Dean looked up into the trees, spotted Beth and gave her a nod of thanks. She acknowledged it, and then hopped down, and started running away from the camp. That’s when Sam saw the bodies littering the forest floor. They all had their heads, so she’d just been shooting them to knock them out and give them a window to get out of here. How she knew to do that, Sam didn’t know. How Dean knew she was going to do that, Sam didn’t know. All he knew at this point was that what she’d done would only buy them a little time, so all of his attention needed to go into running as fast as he could back towards the truck.

His legs were longer, so that helped with speed. That was true of Dean too, but he lost Dean after not that long. Looking back, Sam saw that Dean was waiting for Cas and Beth to catch up. They were running, but they weren’t running very fast, because they were picking off the vampires in the lead using their crossbows and tranq guns, and that was slowing them down. And if this was a movie, Sam might’ve thought the way this was playing out looked pretty cool, but it wasn’t a movie, so instead, Sam really wished he hadn’t looked back, because they were being chased by the whole of the vampire army now.


	9. Near Annihilation

Waving Sam on, I yelled, “Don’t stop! Forget the truck! Head northwest!” I knew there was an open field in that direction. I’d asked Bobby for the location of any open spaces, and he’d told me about it. It’s why we came in from the west. I’d wanted to drive by and make sure it was there, and it was. Of course I hadn’t planned for it to be for this, but it had been my back up plan if the snow vampires emerged. It worked for this too. 

_”Uh, archangel Gabriel, Dad, you might want to send the other hunters, weapons and all, to that field I told you about. Now would be a good time.”_

I picked up my pace. It took us about 10 minutes to get to the field after that, and as we approached, I saw Sam slow down, so I just sprinted right on past him towards the middle. I saw the other hunters come out of the trees to the east, because they’d caught sight of me. Stephen looked like he was waving until I got to the middle, stopped and pointed to the woods behind us. Dean, Sam, and Cas weren’t too far behind me, and maybe 10 seconds later, the vampires started running out of the woods into the field. The sun was slowing them down a lot more out here in the field than it had in the woods, but it wasn’t keeping them from chasing us down either.

Reloading my crossbow and tranq gun, I took aim and fired into the masses heading towards us, so the hunters could see that these were in fact vampires if they didn’t get that from Jasper barking. This is what he’d been trained to track afterall. Maybe 20 seconds after that, the vampires collided into Dean, Sam, Cas, and me, and we had to resort to fighting hand-to-hand. If the hunters wanted to see if Sam and Dean could still do this, now was the time for them to see that they could, and they could. Dean was like a dark knight taking heads left, right, and center. Sam was like a white knight doing the same. Cas was an angelic warrior showing no mercy for the opponent. And me? I felt a little inspired by Abbey’s war cry sounding out over the battlefield. As far as fun in combat went, this was definitely in my top three. It was as much fun as I had when my Dad and I were closing the gates of Hell, or when Dean and I were running through the devil’s trap in Wyoming. This is what I’d needed. This is what made me feel like I was home. 

That’s not to say it was easy. Even with our talented group of seasoned hunters, we were vastly outnumbered, so when things got a little too hot, I asked for a little help. _”God, I love pinball. Would kind of like to see something like that, but life-sized. You know what I mean?”_

I felt the wind pick up, and change in the air, and 3 seconds before it happened I fell to my knees and hoped everyone else got the hint while I shouted, “Hunters down!” 

I don’t know how many of them heard me, because there was a lot of noise going on, but Dean did, because he fell to his knees a second after me. Cas took his lead from Dean, and so did Sam. I glanced to my left, and saw that Abbey had followed my lead, and that’s when it happened. A charge of lightning came up out of the the middle of the field and started ricocheting off of all of the vampires near it and then ricocheting off of those onto others, and every single one it touched got fried. Within about 30 seconds, half the field had been cleared of whatever vampires were left. I looked around while the rest of the vampires tried to flee and saw my fellow hunters all kneeled on the ground and watching the ordered chaos happening around them. Sam, Yuri, and Pamela looked awestruck. Carrie, Dean, Meg, Ivan, and Cas looked focused, like they were ready to take on any vampires that decided to keep fighting. Rufus and Stephen were laughing their asses off. Yeah, I was definitely home.

\----------------------

“We need to talk.” 

I looked up at Sam, and Meg said, “Uh oh. I know that look even on that baby face. You’re about to get a lecture. Come find me when it’s over. I want to hear more about me possessing you,” before she stomped out her cigarette, got up from the porch, and headed back inside. 

Sam took her spot, and I thought it was going to just be a lecture from him, but it turned out Dean wanted to join in, because he came out the front door as Meg was going in and took the spot to my right. Dean went first. “Hell of a day. That what it’s like here all the time?” 

“Not all the time, but it’s usually the way it works out when there’s something big we have to handle.”

Dean gave me a dazzling genuine grin and said, “Yeah? That was awesome. Think this place might not be all bad.” 

I guess he wasn’t here to give me a lecture. Sam on the other hand . . . “Awesome? What happened today was not awesome or okay.” He looked at me and added, “You used us as bait with those vampires.” 

“I just took advantage of a situation that presented itself.” 

Sam’s nostrils flared before he said, “You lead us into that vampire camp, so you could get them to chase us to that field without telling any of us what you were doing!” 

“No, I didn’t!” He told me to explain how I knew to get set up in the trees, so I did. “Did you hear how loud those vamps were when we went in that shed? There’s no way the other vamps in that place didn’t hear them. We should’ve had 2 minutes, at most, and yet nothing happened. I knew something was off, and the longer they went without doing anything, the more I thought that they actually were doing something. We just didn’t know it. Those guards had no problem standing out in the sun as long as they were in the shade and fairly well covered, so what was stopping the others from doing the same thing and blocking our exits? Croats did that to me one time. They let me drive right into a town, get the kid I was there to save, and then waited until I left to try and stop me.” 

Sam quickly countered with, “Why the southwest?” 

_Isn’t it obvious?_ “It was on the west side of the camp, and that’s the side we needed.” 

“To do what?” 

“To get the fuck out of there? Anywhere along the south would’ve worked, because that’s the side that was the furthest from the house and the other outbuildings, but we needed something on the west side, so southwest it was.“ 

Sam was still pretty miffed and asked about the smoke. “Vampires have a stronger sense of smell than we do, so I made a vampire stink bomb out of what we use to make our scent masking stuff to disorient them the way the dog collar did with sound the other night, and I added smoke to block their visibility and increase their confusion. Nobody was going into a confined space like that with 200 monsters and no way out unless they went in like that.” 

Sam started to say, “Why didn’t –“ 

“Because I never planned on having you go into that shed, so you didn’t need to be privy to that.” 

Sam looked past me at Dean and asked, “Did you know?” 

Dean shrugged and said, “No. All I need to know is that it worked.” 

With an annoyed huff, Sam turned his attention back on me. “Let’s get back to you using us as bait. If that’s not what you were doing, then how did you know where that field was? Why did you have the hunters there waiting to meet us? Don’t you think we –“ 

Getting a little defensive, I interrupted him. “That field was my back up plan for if the snow vampires came out to play. You didn’t need to know every little thing I was thinking before we got there. Do you have any idea how many different eventualities I have going through my head to account for things that never happen? Why would I tell you those when you have to focus on the job at hand?” I leaned closer and added, “And I had my Dad send the hunters to that field, because those hunters needed to know that you and Dean, but especially Dean, can still do this, and to do that, they had to see you in the heat of battle. They have to see actions that show you know what you’re doing, not hear words that say you do. They also saw what kind of power they have on their side. Abbey and Meg have seen it. You, Cas, and Dean have seen it. The rest of them have only heard about it. They need to have confidence in us, not just so they don’t turn on us, but because they have to believe that we can get the job done, every single time, the way Rufus was saying earlier. They need that, so they can keep going. What you see in that house is all that’s left of the hunters in North America. They’re the only ones going out to look for more people and the only ones going out and actively killing monsters. We represent something to those hunters that’s much bigger than what we actually are.” 

After I’d said what I needed to say, I got up and left them there, so I could go back in and get this poker tournament started. Maybe I said what they needed to hear. Maybe I didn’t. I didn’t really know. It was time to take the training wheels off. They didn’t need them. They were two, fully grown, capable men.

I woke up the next morning to Rogue poking me in the face. There weren’t a whole lot of places to put people here, so we’d shared the bed. Apparently, she’d decided that I’d had enough sleep, which I guess I did, because with more people being around, it meant that other people had been able to do the night watch, so I’d gotten a full night’s sleep even though it’d been a late night. “You want breakfast?” She played with my hair and nodded, so I said, “You want some fruit?” She nodded again. Well, that was breakfast sorted. “You know what you want to wear today?” She paused and looked at me before she shook her head. “Let’s have a look.” 

She rolled to get up, and I followed her, so we could go through her bag. Unicorn t-shirt, purple hoodie, jeans, white socks, and her Thundercats shoes. We were trying potty training, so we went through that ritual, and then came back to the room for a quick change of her diaper. Then she helped me get her dressed, and after she was ready to start her day, it was my turn. 

She had an opinion about everything I pulled out for me to wear. When I got to midnight blue hoodie, she clapped, and she clapped again when I got to my Bears long-sleeved t-shirt. Now she wanted to change her t-shirt, so I let her, and she picked her Bears t-shirt. I saw what she was going for there. With her purple hoodie and her Bears t-shirt, now we were kinda dressed the same. I guess she wanted to be twins today. Rather be twins with her than Rachel, who was presumably dead now if I had a whole soul.

Going downstairs, we headed past all the sleeping hunters and into the kitchen to get some food, and then after that I had to figure out how to entertain her, so we didn’t wake anybody up. _Outside it is. What should we do out here? Hm._ Usually, I trained, but Dad went back to the camp to look after the kids, so I didn’t have anyone to watch her, and I didn’t think running 5 miles was something she could do with me. Having her watch me shoot things was probably a bad idea. “Wanna watch me climb a rope?” 

I don’t think she knew what I meant, but she nodded anyway, so I told her to stay put, and then ran to jump up onto the rope on my new grown-up version of my wall back at Bobby’s. When I got all the way to the top and climbed up onto the beam, I looked down at her, and she hadn’t taken her eyes off of me. They were huge. I wondered what she'd do if I went down the other side of the barn and ran up beside her, so that’s what I did. When I got back, she was looking between the roof and back towards the house, like she wasn’t sure if she should go tell somebody that I’d disappeared. As soon as she saw me, she started smiling and clapping and pointed at the rope again. Perfect. She could be my personal trainer. 

We did that a couple more times. Then she started meeting me around the side of the barn when I ran back towards the front, like she thought we were playing hide and seek, so I started climbing back up the rope at the back of the barn and coming down the rope at the front, so I could run around behind her when she looked for me at the back of the barn. It kind of made that whole thing more fun. 

When we got tired of doing that, I decided that it was time for her to learn how to make snowmen. We made a whole family of them, so we were at it for a while. Then somebody let Jasper out. Looking at the house, I didn’t see anybody at the door, but somebody had to have done it unless Jasper learned a new skill. 

Rogue loved dogs. Jules was her favorite, followed by Millie, but she loved Jasper too, so we threw sticks and had Jasper bring them back to us for a while. I thought maybe it was a little too cold for her to stay out there for much longer, so we went back inside, and it looked like a few people were up and moving around the place now. I checked my watch. It’d gone back to being my watch from this universe when we got here, and it still kept perfect time. I guess Rogue and I had been out there for about 3 hours. _What should we do now?_

“You wanna take a nap?” She shook her head. “You wanna help me do things for my job?” She didn’t know what I meant, so I decided to show her. I grabbed a jar of dead man’s blood, sat down with some tranquilizer darts, and told her not to touch. I just wanted her to watch while I emptied the darts and refilled them with the dead man’s blood. We needed a lot of them for the Alpha. He was still out there, and this was the only way we had to bring him down. Even 100 arrows with dead man’s blood on them wouldn’t inject him with enough dead man’s blood to do much good. 

There were other lesser vamps, like Tom, who were still out there, but they weren’t my main concern right now. According to Bobby, there weren’t many of them left, and now that we’d cut the vamp numbers almost to nil, he could pick up specific dots to let us know where individual vampires were, including the Alpha, which he thought he had narrowed down to one of the dots he was watching. He said it moved too fast to be anything, but the Alpha. 

As soon as everyone was up, we were packing up and going after him. He wasn’t even in this state anymore. With all of us working on it together, I had faith we could end him soon, and that was the goal. This mission wasn’t about exterminating every last vampire, even though we’d come very close to doing that. It was about ending the vampire army and getting rid of the Alpha. We’d done the first part. Now we had to do the second part, then we could go home and spend the 2 months I told the kids at the camp, we’d stay when I got back.


	10. The Camp In South Dakota

They’d needed all of the hunters to bring the Alpha down. Dean was the one who finished him off. He’d felt like he had to be the one to do it for a couple of reasons. One, Beth was up on Alpha kills by 4 to nil on him, which she kind of rubbed in his face before they left her back at the safe house with Rogue. Two, what Beth said the other night to Sam about why she’d had Gabriel send the hunters to that field had clicked with Dean. It was essentially what Gabriel had told them, the whole ‘fake it til you make it’ thing, but she was saying he didn’t have to fake much to keep these people on side. 

He just had to hunt the way he’d always hunted and fight the way he’d always fought and kill the way he’d always killed, and if the other hunters saw that he was as good at those things as they expected him to be, the rest would come . . . even if he didn’t remember them. It helped that Beth’d had the hunters show up when he was at his best, kicking ass and taking heads, and he hadn’t had to think about it. All he’d had to do was let his body do what it’d been trained to do since he was a kid.

After the Alpha was dead, everybody here was bruised and battered, but nobody had gotten seriously hurt or killed. It’d been a success. Dean started to get the stuff out of his bag to stitch Sam up when they got back to the truck. Sam could do the same for him when he was done. That Stephen guy hopped in the cab with the two of them, while everyone else piled into the back. When Stephen saw what Dean was getting ready to do, he told Dean that if he wanted it done right, he should wait until they got back and have Beth do it, because that’s what everyone else was going to do. 

According to Stephen, Beth was the acting doctor for what was left of this world until they could find another real doctor to replace her, so having her take care of it and check out older injuries they hadn’t been able to have anyone look at while they’d been out on the road, was a luxury none of them were really as annoyed by as they pretended to be when she made them do it. Their health was something they took for granted before the outbreak, but now it was something they had to take seriously, because the world was depending on them to stay fit and alive. “And she’s nowhere near as harsh as Dr. Thomas was. That woman knew her stuff, but she was a dragon.” 

That Stephen guy talked the whole way back to the safe house. It annoyed Sam, but Dean thought he was all right. Stephen loved hunting, and he was good at it. All of them were. This was definitely Dean’s kind of a place. He didn’t have to hide that he was a hunter. He didn’t have to hide that he was good at killing. That poker tournament they had a few days ago had been all right too. 

None of the money any of them won meant anything, so it wasn’t about that. It was about being crowned the overall winner for the next two months, drinking, and catching up with other soldiers in the fight for mankind. There was an instant bond Dean felt with these hunters that he never felt with any of the hunters at the Roadhouse or Gordon Walker. In a lot of ways, Dean felt like he was home. 

“You didn’t want Sam to take care of this for you?” 

Dean tried to look around at the back of his shoulder, but still couldn’t see it and shrugged. “Stephen said if I didn’t want much of a scar to have you do it.” 

Beth smiled while she got something out of her bag. “Didn’t think scars were a big deal for you.” 

They weren’t. It was mostly just something to say, because she made him nervous. “Hey, are you really the only doctor around to take care of this stuff?” 

Beth stuck him with a needle in a couple of places while he’d been distracted with talking. He hadn’t been expecting it, but she’d been so fast about it, he didn’t have time to bitch about her doing it. “For now. Dr. Thomas was our doctor, but she died during the daeva attack on our camp. She showed me a few things when we both had the time, and she used to give me medical books or articles she found, because she said she thought I’d find them interesting when I was out on the road. She was always trying to find people to teach, because she didn’t want to be the last doctor standing, but she was really strict on whom she admitted to her medical school. There were two kids at the Wisconsin camp enrolled, and she used to let me sit in on those classes to observe when I had the time. She might’ve gone over suturing techniques and things like that with me too, because she thought I was on the right track, but I hadn’t been formally trained, and she thought I could do better. We left one of her medical students behind in Wisconsin, and the other she left behind in Kansas when she came to our camp in South Dakota. We had a mutual respect for each other, so I think she decided to try and train me without really telling me that’s what she was doing, especially when I came back as a blank slate, who didn’t know anyone and had plenty of time to read . . . There that one wasn’t too bad. Do you have anymore?” 

Was she done? Dean looked down at his chest and there was a deep cut that could maybe use some attention and maybe a bruise on his abdomen? He turned around to face her and let her get a look them. She cleaned up the cut and started putting some butterfly bandages over it. While she did that, Dean said, “Stephen said you make them let you look at old injuries and do physicals and stuff like that, so they can stay fit and alive to do their jobs.” 

Beth laughed. “I have to bribe Rufus with a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, Meg with cigarettes, and Stephen with a bottle of Glenfiddich just to get them to let me look at something that needs to be stitched, reset, or popped back into place. That is a physical for a hunter. Maybe they might let me take their blood pressure and the like, or maybe they’ll tell me if they were really sick a few months back but are fine now. I’m keeping an eye on Ivan for signs of pre-diabetes and Rufus for cirrhosis of the liver, but that’s about it, and that’s only after I threaten to withhold whatever it is I bribe them with. Everything I bribe them with is bad, medically speaking, and I know for a fact that as soon as they walk out that door, they take the slings off and don’t take the pills I give them . . . the only ones I don’t have to bribe and who do what they’re supposed to do are Carrie and Abbey, and I’m not entirely sure how to treat Abbey. I don’t know what’s normal for Amazon-succubus hybrids. She just humors me, because it seems important to me, and she thinks I’m her leader. I guess I don’t have to bribe Pamela either, but that’s because she refuses to see me. She says she’s a psychic, so she’ll let me know if she senses anything she or Stephen can’t take care of by themselves.” 

“Go out with me.” It was out before he knew he was going to say it, and Beth’s smile dropped while she finished off putting the tape down over the gauze she’d put on the cut. 

She moved onto the bruise on his abdomen and said, “That’s like a celebratory high or transference, because I’m sewing you up or –“ 

He stopped her poking and prodding and said, “No, I’m serious. Go out with me.” He’d already said it, and he’d meant it, so he might as well follow through on it. 

She sat back to look at him. “Where would we go?” 

It wasn’t a no, so he smiled while she handed him his shirt. “I don’t know. What do you guys do for fun around here?” 

She exhaled a very brief laugh and said, “For me, fun was the other day in that field, and maybe the poker tournament that night.“ 

That’s why they’d be good together. That was exactly his kind of fun. “Was thinking more like something you and me could do that doesn’t involve killing.” 

Sighing, Beth reached back to grab his flannel and tossed it to him after he put his t-shirt on. He was putting that on when she said, “I took you to a Led Zeppelin concert in 1973 one time, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. Things kind of went south after that.” 

He’d frozen for a few seconds when she said that Zeppelin thing, but she didn’t see it, because she’d gotten up to throw her gloves away. “You took me to see Zepplin in 1973?” 

She shrugged while she put some kind of antiseptic gel on her hands and said, “Yeah, we have a time spell we use to get stuff in the past when it was cheap. It was about 6 months after I came back without my memories. We spent all day there, went to see Soylent Green and some cowboy movie you wanted to watch, and then we went to the concert and hopped a few bars, played some poker, and it didn’t go well.” _Oh. How the hell did I fuck that up?_ She wasn’t the one to ask. Cas was. “How about we go back to the camp and give it a few weeks. If you still want to do something, ask again.” Wasn’t exactly what he’d wanted her to say, but maybe by then he could figure out what he wanted to do on their date, so he gave her a hesitant nod, and bolted for the door.

They were making a pit stop along the road on their way to Sioux Falls, and Sam said, “I’m not sure about this.” 

_He’s not sure about what?_ It’s not like there were any cops out here on the road to arrest them for peeing in public. That much was blatantly clear on the drive here. Dean had known that it was quiet when they were in Vermont, and he’d known they hadn’t had any problems finding places to stay, but that was one small part of the country. The drive this far had really driven home the fact that this is all there was; snow, empty houses, empty cars alongside the road, empty fields, empty towns, empty cities, empty everything. They started walking back to the truck, and Sam still hadn’t said any more than that, so Dean said, “I’m not a mind reader, Sam.” 

“I don’t know about going to this camp. It sounds like a camp for refugees, and from what I’ve heard, I know they’re doing the best they can, but it doesn’t sound like they’re doing enough. I don’t think they’re doing a good job with those kids. I mean they’re raising them to be hunters. They can’t even be bothered to get them anything for their birthdays. If they’re the foster parents to those kids, they aren’t giving them enough attention. I’m not sure . . . I’m not sure I can sit back and see all the things they’re doing wrong without trying to change it, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Beth and Cas, but especially, Beth, isn’t all that open to anyone questioning her about anything. She’s like Dad now.” 

That was a bit harsh. Sam was just annoyed that she wasn’t all buddy-buddy with him anymore now that they were living in a dangerous universe where she was trying to raise her daughter, be a hunter, coordinate where the other hunters were going after they left, calling all her contacts in the camps to see if they needed anything, and being a doctor . . . and all of that was just what she did on the road. Who knew what she’d be doing when they got back to the camp with 1000 kids? She didn’t have time to fill Sam in on every little detail of every plan she had the way she did when they were kids. 

“Look around you, Sam. There’s nobody left. It is a refugee camp. Hold off on being too judgmental until you see the place and don’t go in there acting like you know better than them. Give it a couple of weeks before you start trying to change their home, cuz that’s what it is, and nobody likes it when you come into their house and start trying to change shit.” 

By the time they got to Bobby’s, Dean was ready to have somewhere to hang his hat for a little while and to see some people outside of the ones in the snow plow. It’s not that he didn’t like the people in the snow plow. Seeing them everyday actually cheered him up some. He just needed a break from all of the bleakness out there on the road and to be reminded that they weren’t all that was left. 

Pulling into Bobby’s lot, Dean couldn’t get over the changes, not that you couldn’t see them from miles away with how flat the land was around here, but seeing the changes up close . . . He’d spent a good chunk of his childhood summers here, and it was the same place, because he could see the cars stacked around the place in almost exactly the same positions he remembered them being, but there were cabins surrounding the main house and sheds, and there were additions onto the house. “You guys did all of this?” 

Beth shrugged while she turned the truck off. “The hunters and the full-time resident adults did a lot, but the kids did most of it.” Yeah, but to do all this, you needed the right kind of leadership. He had the feeling she was being modest. 

Beth unbuckled Rogue from her car seat and helped her down to the ground. The rest of the hunters climbed out, and Dean watched kids start coming out of the woodwork to see them. Rogue went running up to one of the older teenage boys, and he picked her up before turning to address the rest of the kids. Dean could tell by the way that kid held himself and the way the other kids responded to him that he the leader here. Catching up to Beth, he asked, “Hey, who is that?” 

Beth whispered, “Ty, and yeah, he is the leader of the kids. Jenna, the girl standing to his right is his . . . well, she’s kind of like the kid version of me with you, in that, she advises him and makes sure the others stay in line when he’s busy with something else. Ben is their second in command. Each cabin has 100 kids, and there is a house leader in each one. See if you can pick them out of the crowd,” before she went up to Ty, and the kids all did tests to make sure she was Beth, and not an impostor.

Sam leaned into his shoulder while he watched them and said “Are they serious with this?” 

Where the hell had Sam been the last few weeks, because is sure as hell didn’t seem like he was seeing the same things Dean was seeing about this world. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re serious about the tests, Sam. How else are they alive on this planet?” 

Leaving Sam to join Beth in front of the kids, he caught the tail end of what she was saying to them. “Yeah, it’s kind of like when I didn’t remember you guys. In fact, it’s a lot like that, but I still remembered what this world was like even if I didn’t remember the people in it. This is more like they are coming from a time 2 years before the outbreak, so I guess you get to see what they were like before you ever heard about them. They still know what they’re doing, and to prove it, you guys can put them through their paces tomorrow during training . . . all day, since it’s the weekend.” 

One of the girls looked past Beth and Dean towards Sam and said, “2 years before the outbreak . . . Does that mean he’s going to go bad again?” 

Beth held her breath for a few seconds before she exhaled and looked back at Sam, like she hadn’t thought of that. When she looked back at the kids, she looked a lot more confident and said, “No. He never used his powers in the universe where we were, so he never got a taste for them or the demon blood.” 

Cas added, “But remember what happened in Wisconsin. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen again.” 

Whatever that meant, the kids all looked at Sam distrustfully and nodded in unison. Dean kind of got the feeling for the first time that these kids were dangerous and understood how they’d been able to overthrow the adults in this camp. Teaching them how to be killers after the shit they’d seen may not be the best idea. They were a bunch of sociopaths. 

Beth started to say something on Sam’s behalf, and Cas said, “The signs are there, Beth.” 

Beth slumped, like she thought Cas was right, and the girl who asked about whether or not Sam was going to go bad again said, “We just need to keep an eye on it like we did with Jody. Sam’s the one who talked to her. Maybe she’s the one who should explain it to Sam.” 

Beth thought it over and then smiled. “Yeah . . . That’s a good idea. We’ll go with that . . . So, uh, why don’t you guys show them around, and I’ll put Rogue to bed. When I’m done you can show me the greenhouse.” 

Dean wasn’t sure about being left alone with this many mini-killers and grabbed Beth’s arm to stop her from walking to the house with Rogue. “Uh, what about us? Don’t we need to go through the tests?” 

Taking a step closer, Beth whispered, “I passed, and I’m vouching for you, so they know you’re fine. And they’re just being protective of each other, Cas, me, Rogue, the other adults around here . . . they’ve been through a lot because of Sam. Because of him, their parents are dead. Their brothers and sisters are dead. Their cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents and friends and teachers are all dead. Most of the people in their lives that are dead are going to Hell no matter how young or old they were because of that demon virus they got. Because of him, most of these kids were forced to live in shantytowns where their homes were cardboard shacks they had to build themselves. Because of him, they had to use a big central cesspit as their communal toilet. It was full of disease, so they had to watch their friends die from illness on the dirt floors of their shacks without any medical treatment. Because of him, demons were their guards and barbed wire was the only thing that separated them from camps full of skinwalkers, shifters, and werewolves. Because of him, they all got lice, were malnourished, dehydrated, and lived in terror because of what the demons put them through on a daily basis. Because of him, they watched their friends and the smaller kids they were protecting be hauled off by demons and put on the back of trucks, never to be seen again, because they were being traded to monsters for food, and some of them were on those trucks when we found them. Because of him, the ones that were lucky enough to not be taken to Vegas were forced to watch their parents or older siblings or complete strangers die of starvation when their food ran out. They’re only alive today, because the people who were looking after them gave them what was left of their food, and that kept them alive long enough for us to save them.” 

That wasn’t the Sam he knew. It wasn’t the Sam he grew up with. Beth gently put her hand on his forearm and added, “There is a reason that Minos wrapped himself around Sam 10 times and thought he should be sent to the abyss in our last life even though Sam doesn’t remember what he did here. Even if you’ve never seen it, Sam has it in him to do all of those things . . . And the thing is that these kids all forgave him and saw that he wasn’t something to be afraid of anymore, because he kicked his habit and started doing everything he could to help them grow up to have half-way decent lives without ever selfishly thinking that it meant he could be redeemed for all of the bad things he’s done. And now he doesn’t remember any of it, the good or the bad. They have every right to be worried that he’s going to go off the deep end again, but they won’t do anything to him. They’re just going to watch him until they’re sure he’s okay. Don’t worry.” 

Apparently she thought that was supposed to be reassuring, because then she turned to take Rogue into the house and left Dean to face a crowd of 1000 faces he didn’t know that probably wanted his brother dead and had the numbers and training to do it.


	11. Dealing with Stress

My first class of the day filed into the room. It was Biology. We wouldn’t be in here for long. I just had to check attendance and give them the reading homework I wanted them to do before the next class. They’d done an amazing job on the greenhouse, and I spent yesterday going to find potting soil in Sioux Falls, so I could thaw it out and put it in planters last night. It was all set up for them and ready to go. 

They were each getting a planter box, and they were each going to pick 5 different types of plants they wanted to grow. My hope was that they’d maintain them and get to enjoy their hard work with tomatoes or whatever it was they chose to grow, all while learning about seed and plant anatomy, photosynthesis, and the nitrogen cycle. They were aged between 7 and 10, so that was about all they’d be covering, but the older kids I had later in the day would be looking at plant cells under microscopes and learning about plant cell structure and all of those things on top of being responsible for their own planter boxes. 

I think the older kids were a little disappointed to be moving on from anatomy and physiology, or that’s what a couple of them said yesterday when they asked me where I was going, and I told them I was going to get dirt from town for the plant section of the year. They’d probably like the bacteria and fungus section even less, but if we stopped off in Colorado for a field trip, so they could see what we were hoping to do with bacteria and then went through the process of fermentation with them, so they could learn about yeast and . . . maybe I should rethink that one. The last thing we needed were them figuring out how to make moonshine in their cabins. 

Sam and Dean came into the classroom just as the last kids got there. Sam wanted to ‘observe’ my teaching techniques. He said it was so he could prepare for when he started teaching classes next week, but really, I think it’s because he wanted to make sure I was doing it up to his standards. Dean was following Sam everywhere as long as they were in this camp, so that’s why he was there even though his excuse was that he wanted to get a better idea of what the camp schedule was like. For the most part, I ignored them when I started class.

I told the kids what we’d be doing for the next section of our course and laid out a brief outline on the board, so they would know what to expect. When I was done Sam said, “What about weather, like the rain cycle? Wouldn’t that be a good thing to go over now?” 

Dean nudged Sam to make him shut up, and I looked at the kids. “Does anyone else want to answer that one?” 

Kiki raised her hand and said, “We already did the rain cycle and clouds last semester when we learned about the climate. What’s happening now isn’t an ice age, because it isn’t natural. It’s supernatural. When the Earth gets back to normal, it’ll go away, and even if it doesn’t, humans are smart, so we’ll find a way to survive around it the way we are now . . . Except I’ve been thinking that it is going away already, so we just have to hold on a little longer, and then we'll be okay.” I smiled and said that I thought she was probably right, which seemed to make her pretty happy, because kids like to hear when their opinions are probably right. 

I asked if they had any more questions, and one of the kids asked if I could explain the time thing I’d told Ty again, because they were having a hard time understanding it. Crap. I checked my watch. I had a couple of minutes. I always gave myself a few extra minutes for general chitchat and questions, because they always had a lot of things to say, so we should be good if I made this quick. 

Quickly drawing a tree on the board, I cut out a lot of words the way my Dad said to do to simplify it and explained the trunk, the branch where Sam and Dean had met me, the branch we were on, and the branch we’d just been on. When I looked back around, the kids all seemed good with it, so I wrote what I wanted them to read up on the board, and they took it down in their notebooks. A couple asked if there were any other books they could read too, which made me pretty happy, because it meant I’d have some interest from a couple of them on this module. I told them I’d stop by a library in town on my lunch break and pick something up if they wanted to come see me before training after school, and then I told them all to grab their stuff, because we were going to the greenhouse.

The greenhouse was actually pretty fun, but playing in dirt usually is. I had a bunch of different seeds from different places I’d gone to in town when I was looking for the potting soil. Probably should’ve gone to Wisconsin to get some of their seeds from their greenhouse, but I’d run out of time. I didn’t know how well these would grow after such a long time, but I hoped at least one or two seeds per kid would grow, and if they didn’t, then I could turn it into a lesson on the importance of temperature and age on germination. 

Starting out, I showed them my planters, so they could see I was doing it with them, and then showed them what I wanted to do. When I was done, I told them to pick out seeds, planters, and get started. Some of the kids were growing nothing but flowers and others were trying to grow vegtables. Someone, like Yuri would have to water them while the kids went on their bus tour in a few weeks, but other than that, they were going to be solely responsible for their own plants. Maybe when they got a bit older and the weather outside cleared up, we could try something harder, like blueberries or something. I’d have to read up on it first. 

“Uh, Miss Foley should they be doing that?” I looked at where Sam was looking, and a couple of kids hid their hands behind their backs, but it was pretty obvious they’d been slinging dirt at each other. 

“What do I think about messes?” 

Drake answered, “They’re fine as long as we clean them up before we leave class, so you and the kids after us don’t have to.” 

Glancing at Sam I then said, “That’s right. And what do we call me?” 

Drake quickly answered, “Beth.” 

Exactly, fuck that Miss Foley crap. “Why do I just have you call me Beth?” 

A couple of the kids looked at each other and then Piper said, “At the camp, the demons told us that they were there to protect us from Beth Foley and Dean Winchester, because Beth Foley and Dean Winchester were evil and liked to eat kids for breakfast with a stack of pancakes on the side before they went out to play soccer with little kid heads. You don’t want us to think about that when we think of you, so you don’t have us say your last name.” 

Then Becky added, “Unless we’re scared and have to threaten bad people, and then we can say what Beth Foley is going to do to them if they don’t leave us alone.” 

I laughed, because that was a new one, and Sam said, “And what will Beth Foley do to them if they don’t leave you alone?” 

Becky looked at Piper and then at Sam before she said, “Well, after she saves us, she’s going to hunt them down and punish them, so they can’t hurt anybody else.” 

They weren’t wrong. That’s exactly what I’d do. “Who told you guys that?” 

They all looked at each other and then Becky whispered, “Ezra.” 

Ezra? I crouched down to be closer to their heights, and said, “Is Ezra talking more?” 

They nodded and then Becky said, “Some. Not a lot. We were talking about the bad people in the world, like the ones who sold Little Sam, and Ezra was doing his homework in his bunk and heard us. He told us not to be scared, because if we got taken, you wouldn’t stop looking until you found us. And you make bad men go away when they won’t learn their lesson and be good.” 

Yeah, I did say something like that to him a long time ago. “What else did he say?” 

Piper smiled and said, “You’re scared of spiders, but you wouldn’t let that stop you from killing spider monsters to help people. He gets scared of talking, but if you can do that, then he can say more to help people, and if he can do that, then we’re strong enough to beat up our fear, even if we can’t see what we’re scared of and only do it for other people at first.” 

Ezra was an amazing kid, and I hadn’t had a chance to see him yet since we’d been back. He should be in my physics class after lunch. I was looking forward to seeing him. Until then, I had a class in front of me that needed my attention, so I asked them if they were all done planting their seeds. Some were. Some weren’t. I helped the ones that weren’t, and by the time we were done, there was only about 5 minutes left in class. That’s when all of the kids that’d been throwing dirt around the place started getting brooms and dust pans to clean it up and put it back in the potting soil bags without me having to say a word to them about it. They were all amazing kids.

“What was that?” 

I sighed and looked at Sam while we went to my first chemistry class of the day. “What was what?” 

Dean nudged him again to try and get him to shut up, but Sam brushed him off and said, “Was that supposed to be a class? First of all, the age range is too big for them all to be getting something out of it. If you don’t have enough adults around here to teach them, then maybe you should look into bringing more adults here, so they can get a reasonable education. Second of all, they aren’t learning when you’re letting them throw things around and make a mess. They’re making a mess, and that’s it. Third of all, nice way you have of brainwashing them into thinking that killing other people is a good thing if it means you’ll keep them safe. Fourth, talking about things that don’t pertain to what they’re learning shouldn’t be happening. Keep it to classwork. You’re their teacher, not their guidance counselor or their Mom.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “I am the closest thing to a Mother that any of them have left. Dean, whether he knows it or not, is the closest thing they have to a Father, so Rogue isn’t the only one missing him right now. The age range of these classes is perfectly fine. There was a time when schoolhouses used to range in age from first grade to twelfth grade with one teacher. That was a perfectly acceptable way of learning, and this is a hell of a lot better than that. And in case you hadn’t noticed, the world is a bad place now, so there is no way in hell I’m letting anyone set foot in this camp that I wouldn’t trust with my life, which means the council and hunters are the only people that can teach around here. And those kids are learning to be responsible for their own messes and cleaning them up themselves, unlike some of us who’ve had our brothers trailing around after us to do it our whole fucking lives. Take a good look around you, Sam. If the world isn’t the way you want it to be, then give yourself a hard time about it, because you’re the one who made it this way, and you didn’t clean it up. You’re brother did. He’s the only reason any of these kids are even alive, so you can go fuck yourself and stay the fuck out of my classes for the rest of the day, and you’re fucking fired from teaching until you can get a fucking clue.” 

_Wow. Did I just say all of that? That isn’t like me, or it never used to be. Is this because my soul is complete now, and that’s making my temper worse, or am I just stressed to the brim and can’t deal with days upon days of his self-righteousness on top of everything else?_ The second of those was most likely. I’d never been above having a temper. I was just usually able to control it better than that. 

Sam stormed off towards the house, and I let go of a breath I was holding before I looked at Dean. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I shouldn’t have. I know he’s just trying to –“ 

“Be a pain in the ass? Yeah, he is. He’s going over the top with it, and nothing I say makes a difference. That isn’t like him either. Jody talked to him, but I don’t know if it did any good. You’re probably right . . . if it was the three of us running things, and you’re the only one doing it right now, you don’t need his crap on top of everything else . . . What do you need me to do?” 

Well, apparently, I was letting him know what I was thinking without meaning to do it. I didn’t say anything, so he said, “Seriously, what do you need me to start doing around here?” 

“Other than follow him around to make sure the kids around here don’t off him?” 

He went from watching Sam’s back to looking down at me. “Is it that obvious?” I nodded, so he said, “I don’t know. When I see them in smaller groups, like they were in that class, they don’t seem quite so . . . Village of the Damned. Think maybe I could go to a few more of your classes? I need to get a better read on the older ones when they aren’t doing weapons training.” 

I told him that was fine and started heading in the direction of my chemistry class again before I told him that he used to help me in my chemistry classes and that he had a shop class that he used to teach with Carl. “Think I remember you telling me that when we were in Cold Oak . . . Thought it sounded like I was living the dream here . . . Mind telling me more about this shop class?” 

I told him what I knew, and then I told him if he wanted to help with hunter training and then going to their cabins after dinner to help them with their homework he could. He didn’t seem too keen on helping out with homework. “Some of them get help on homework, but it’s not all homework. A lot of them just want to ask questions about the world and talk about their days the way they just did in my class.” 

“I’ll think about it . . . Hey, that tree you drew for the kids to explain where we’ve been. Was that true?” 

Even if it was probably uncomfortable for him to hear that his and Sam’s lives mattered that much to the universe, it was true. “Yeah.”

He exhaled a deep sigh and then said, “And that’s what you and Sam were talking about at that dinner in Orlando before we came here . . . we’re going to have to go and chop off some of those branches, so the darkness doesn’t get out?” 

I was still impressed with the way his mind worked. That was ages ago, and he hadn’t really wanted to hear anything I had to say that night or for a long time before that night. “Not really chop them off, because there are people living on those branches, but change the way they’re growing without causing too much damage, yeah. There aren’t as many as you might think. Not all of the times she’s supposed to be released lead to the destruction of the whole forest of trees, but some of them will, so those are the ones that need to be changed.” 

He took that pretty well and then said, “But if those branches are growing because of whatever it is that me and Sam do in those universes . . . that means there are a me and Sam already there, so what happens to them when we show up?” 

That’s where things got a little interesting. “Uh, well, I’m not sure, but I think they stay there, and we change the course of their lives . . . with or without them knowing that we’re doing it. They’re hunters in all of them, so they’d probably take seeing other versions of them about as well as you would. The same goes with Cas and me and Dad depending on whether or not we’re in those universes.” 

He didn’t look like he knew what to say to that until he laughed and said that was kind of messed up, and now he was thinking he should’ve watched that show, so he knew what to expect if all of the branches were kind of like that show. Yeah, he probably should have, but it wasn’t the end of the universe if he didn’t. “How do you know all that stuff?” 

There’s only way I could know all of that. “God and I talked about it when I met him to make my deal to get out of Heaven. I found some things out about he and his sister when I was in the libraries up there, and I brought them to his attention. He’s the one who actually explained it to me using the tree and forest analogy. I just didn’t know he’d maybe consider extending the scope of our deal to other timelines. I guess I should have, but I was a little naïve back then and desperate to get out of Heaven.” 

He nodded, like he’d have to think about that and then said, “So, you’re doing it?” 

Couldn’t say one way or the other, because I couldn’t influence his decision. “I don’t know. Technically, my deal has been fulfilled. We’ll have to see.” 

I was definitely doing it. He looked like he knew that, but decided not to call me on it and then said, “And God lives in this camp?” 

Yep. I saw Chuck at breakfast. “He does.” 

Dean quickly said, “Is it one of the kids, or one of the grown ups?” I smiled, and that’s the only answer he was getting. Chuck would let him know when he was ready.

Dean rolled his eyes at me not giving him an answer and then asked what I needed him to do with Rogue, and I wasn’t really expecting that. “I was going to take her with me to help the kids with their homework, so I could spend a little more time with her before her bedtime, but she really just kind of runs around with the other kids while I’m busy. You could take her with you if you decide to take half of the cabins to help with the homework, or you could babysit her for a few hours if you don’t want to do that.” 

His brow furrowed, and then he said, “So, you’re not going to spend any real time with her today. I mean, you got her up, and then you’ll just get to see her at dinner, and that’s it? You’re on the clock the rest of the time?” 

“It’s my first day back, so that’s the way it’ll be today. She’s been with Cas all day, so she’s okay.” 

He thought about it a little more and finally said, “How about I take all the cabins tonight, so you can hang out with her. Cas is fine, but you’re her Mom, and she doesn’t really have anyone else right now.” 

Well, she had him even if neither of them knew it, but okay. As soon as I agreed to his offer, I instantly felt like a weight had lifted. I think it was from guilt and just wanting to see her. Maybe that was part of the reason I’d had a short fuse with Sam, and I just hadn’t known it until then.


	12. Getting to Know This Place

Dean got up and headed out the door, so he could try to beat the kids to Beth’s first class of the day. Which building was it in again? That shed, or the garage? He headed towards the garage, but she wasn’t there, so he went to the shed. That was the right one. 

Last night had been what he’d needed to get a better idea of what these kids were about. He got to see them when they were at home in their cabins. They weren’t kids. They were mini-adults who’d already raised themselves and each other in that camp in Vegas, and 95% of the kids here had been in that camp in Vegas. He had a few favorites already, and maybe part of it was because they were the ones who reminded him the most of himself when he was a kid, or maybe part of it was because those kids had stepped up to keep the other kids in line, because they knew he didn’t know what he was doing and wanted to help him out, and at the same time, he could tell that they desperately wanted him to remember them even though they were trying not to let on that they did to make it easier on him. It made him want to remember them, because their lives had all been so shit, but if he couldn’t remember them, then he kind of felt like he should at least talk to them a little more, and talking to them more made him like them more. 

When he found Beth, she was setting up some kind of an experiment. It looked like she was on babysitting duty today, because Cas was teaching some History classes this morning. Dean didn’t know what Sam was talking about. These kids were learning things he never learned when he was their age, and they were learning them from experts, like a freaking angel who was alive during the history lesson he was teaching, and they were having fun doing it. 

As soon as Rogue saw him, she smiled and said, “No Dad!” which is what she’d decided his name was, and he kinda liked it. She didn’t expect him to be her Dad, and maybe she was the only one who didn’t expect him to be that guy. Plus, it was almost like she was calling him Dad. Getting used to hearing it was a small step in the direction he needed to take, because he needed to start stepping up there. Even if he didn’t remember her, he was still her Dad. She needed one until her Dad came back, if he came back. 

And then there was her Mom. He was head over heels there. He never stopped loving her in their other life, but he’d definitely stopped trying and let it go. Even though he’d still loved her, things hadn’t really been the same since Gabriel told him who he was. They’d gotten a lot worse after Gabriel told Beth about this life. Maybe he’d needed the time to grieve that relationship he’d felt like he lost, and now that he had, he didn’t really feel bad about how he felt about this Beth. 

He hadn’t really felt like this since those first few weeks after he met her under the bleachers. He had no idea where he stood with her. She was in her own little world, and it was a world he wanted to be a part of if she’d let him. He was thinking maybe tonight he could talk to the kids if he took the homework shift again and get an idea from them on how to read her or what to do. They seemed to know her better than anyone else other than Cas or her Dad, and her Dad was off chasing Playboy bunnies, and Cas was babysitting Rogue, teaching class, training the kids after school, fixing his room, and arguing with that angel, Gadreel. 

“What can you tell me about Ty?” 

Beth smiled briefly before she looked over her notes again. “What do you want to know?” 

Anything. “How’d he end up here?” 

“You and I saved him from being eaten by vampires at a trading post. Jenna and 3 little kids were with them. I kept an eye on them in the van, and you went back into the woods to clear the nest . . . there were something like 24, and it took a while, but you found 3 little kids they’d been rationing themselves on over the 2 weeks since the last deliver. One of the little boys was already dead. There wasn’t much left. The other little boy died in your arms, while you were trying to get him to me . . . you helped him die, got Sarah, the little girl to me, and then went back out and built Tommy a funeral pyre. Ty and Jenna took Sarah in as one of their own and have been collecting kids ever since.”

“He and Jenna together?” 

Beth paused and looked confused. “Yeah, all the time. You never see one without the other.” 

“No, I mean –“

Beth smiled, like she knew what he’d meant and had just been messing with him. “I don’t know. They could be best friends or more than that. It’s hard to tell, but it’s a camp full of teenagers. Sex-ed has been more than covered with all of them. That’s all we can do. We can’t follow all of them around 24-hours a day, and we can’t force any of them apart.” 

Sam was gonna love that one. “Who got stuck with the sex-ed job?” 

Beth exhaled a laugh and said, “Sam talked to the guys. I talked to the girls. We did it that way to make it less awkward for them, and we have birth control covered. Sam’s got a jar of condoms somewhere in one of his classes, so they can take them anonymously. So do I, and then of course if the girls want birth control, they come to me for that, and I make sure we’re fully stocked up on it in the clinic section of the house. I get it from the past to make sure its still in date . . . We haven’t had any pregnancies yet, and I’ll never say who is on it. Not even to you . . . haven’t gotten an STD protcol down, because we don’t have an actual clinic built yet, let alone a lab for tests. Plus, it’d probably make them feel really awkward having to come to me for something like that. It’s why we need a real doctor around here that can keep their professional distance. Until, then the only thing we can really do is talk prevention and wait until they think they have something, go through the symptoms, and try to treat accordingly.” That sucked. He might have found a way to get in her good books without having to ask the kids though. Maybe he could build that clinic and lab she obviously wanted. He wasn’t exactly sure how to do that, but he’d figure it out.

“You think Ty and Jenna are like us?” 

Beth took a deep breath and looked down at her desk. “Soul mates?” 

Yeah, that’s what he’d meant. There was a vibe he recognized when they were together. “It’s possible. Like I said, they’re always together, and you’re right . . . they are a lot like the way you and me were when we were that age. They never would’ve met each other if it hadn’t been for the end of the world though. She’s from Florida. He’s from Idaho. She wanted to move to New York to do fashion. He wanted to move to Seattle to become an architect. They didn’t really even get to see each other much in Vegas, because they were in different camps. The only time they met was when all the teens snuck out at night and went through the storm tunnels to have meetings, so they could let the others know what was happening in their camps and try to come up with a plan to get out of there.” 

They would’ve known even if that were all that they ever saw of each other, or he thought they would’ve known. Part of him knew every time he met Beth when they were kids. It just didn’t really sink in until they were in the woods behind the school after she pulled off her reverse-Carrie. “You talk to them about it?” 

Beth shook her head and said, “I wouldn’t know what to say,” and then it looked like she gave herself a paper cut. It was bad enough to draw a little blood. She looked confused for a few seconds and then grabbed a Band-aid from her desk. “You remember me telling you about being hunted in the woods?”

Yeah, he did, so he nodded, and Beth said, “Well, now that you’re kind of getting to know them, you can put faces to stories I told you about, like Ty . . . He’s one of the kids I told you stayed behind to help me in those woods. They were shooting at him just like they were shooting at Adam and me. He was with Adam when Adam got shot. He was the kid I got them to let go along with Adam in exchange for letting Randy have the first hit. As soon as the guy holding onto him let him go, he turned around and sucker punched the guy . . . They almost killed him for that, but it was an impressive punch.” 

“Any of the others involved in that?” 

“Jenna until I had Cas take her to the other kids and then go in to see what was happening inside the walls. He didn’t come back. The next time I saw him, he was almost dead. They’d tortured him with his own angel blade, and they’d branded him in the side with that sigil I put on the bullets for the angels in Cold Oak . . . and Andrea was in the woods with me too . . . She died in the daeva attack. Abbey and her sister Cameron are the two who killed everyone and carried me away from there. Cameron was a few months more pregnant than I was at the time. I wasn’t very nice to them before that. I thought there was something wrong with them. They were monsters, just not the kind I thought they were becoming.” 

Abbey, the hybrid he’d met? “What happened to Abbey’s sister?” 

Beth sighed and said, “She died during the daeva attack too. Everybody who died that night died saving people.” 

He didn’t know what he thought about that. He was in a world of gray here where it seemed to make a little more sense. Pluse, he’d met Abbey, and he’d buy that if her sister was like her, she’d die for these kids around here. “Her baby?” 

Beth glanced at him and smiled. “Guess.” 

She’d said Abbey’s niece was a couple of months older than Rogue. The kids here weren’t any younger than 6 at most, and that was pushing it. Her baby didn’t make it either? No, Beth wouldn’t have smiled if the baby died. There weren’t any . . . Dean watched Rogue and Lily playing with blocks in the corner, and then it was so obvious, he felt like an idiot. “Lily is a monster?” 

“Half-monster, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s the human half if you remember where I said we picked up her Mom and Aunt.” Right, but Lily looked like a normal little girl though . . . and she was his daughter’s best friend. 

“And Rogue punched her, because . . . “ 

“She didn’t want to share her Dad with Lily.” 

Dean watched Rogue and Lily playing and said, “Is she dangerous?” 

Beth glanced at Lily. “Not so far. She has the looks of an Amazon, but she’s growing at the rate as a human. The quarter of her that’s succubus is the part we keep an eye on because she’s a baby, so she wouldn’t mean to hurt anyone, but she could . . . but then if you think about it, Rogue is kind of a quarter angel, so . . . they make good best friends.“ 

Right. Beth had to be the one pushing that angle, because he didn’t think he would, but then his daughter had punched Lily, because she thought Lily was trying to steal him. Was it because he was keeping a close eye on Lily for signs of her being a monster, or because he was just spending too much time with her? 

“Who does Lily have other than Abbey?” 

Watching him, Beth answered, “Us. Abbey takes care of her when she’s here, kind of, but she was raised by Amazons and demons, so she doesn’t really know how, and she loved her sister, but Lily isn’t her child.” 

Dean found himself feeling a little sorry for Lily even though he didn’t want to. For all the talk of the kids in this camp and Rogue, Beth had never mentioned Lily. Where did that put Lily on everyone’s list of priorities? What did Lily get while Rogue was out on the road with them? Gabriel? If it was Gabriel, that was probably all right. “Your Dad looks after her, right?” 

“Yeah, he’s part of the collective us. So is Jody.” 

Dean glanced at Beth and said, “You never mentioned her in our other life.” 

Looking at the two little girls, Beth responded, “I mentioned her to Sam.” 

Oh. Sam never told him most of the stuff she’d said to him. “Can I?” Beth told him to go ahead. He wanted to get a closer look and see how she and Rogue really got along, because he hadn’t really paid attention to it until now. From what he could tell, she was a good kid . . . just kept calling him, ‘Dad,’ and Rogue kept telling her, ‘No . . . No Dad.’ Lily didn’t seem to notice the difference though and climbed into his lap, and Rogue had never done that. Rogue let her do it without any problems, so he wondered if that meant Rogue didn’t care as much about it with him as she did with the other him. 

A few days later, Dean held a board in place, so Ty could hammer in the nails. It was a good thing Carl had said the kids could take a few days off from their furniture-making module in that shop class to do help Dean build a clinic, or he would’ve had to do this on his own, and he wasn’t even entirely sure he knew enough about what he was doing to do that. He might’ve taken the odd construction job here or there growing up to get some extra cash when his Dad was gone longer than expected, but poker and hustling had been his usual means of making cash, so building a whole building from top to bottom, inside and out, was new to him. And these kids all knew what they were doing. Even after only being able to have 2 classes a day working on it for an hour apiece, they’d laid the foundations and were almost done with the frame.

“So, Beth said you were going to be an architect.” 

Ty glanced at Dean as they picked up an other board to put it where they needed it. “Yeah . . . was. Can’t imagine doing that now."

“Why not? Don’t think you’d have to worry about much competition.” 

Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. This kid had lost everyone in his life. Or maybe it was fine, because Ty laughed. “I don’t know. Sam is . . . was talking about making a college, so we could become whatever we wanted, but him and Beth and the other hunters are busy with normal school and hunting. I think sometimes their ideas are bigger than what they can actually do, but then I think about what the Wisconsin camp was like when I got there. They were still working on the wall, and it didn’t seem like anything was going to stop what was happening in Vegas. But six months later, they brought Vegas down, and the wall got finished, and we had to go to Kansas and start all over again. Then we did it again when they came here. I hear there are camps in Iowa and Colorado now. I heard that Gabriel made it so there’s electricity in Colorado, so they could start making medicine, but that the electricity in Iowa is going up the hard way, and they’re going to fix it all the way to Wisconsin, and then over to us. I barely remember what having electricity that isn’t run off of generators is like . . . No more worrying about filling up the fuel tanks or whether it’s a cloudy day with no wind . . . They’ve done a lot. They’ll do more. It’s just going to take time and more people. That’s why when I get old enough, I’m looking forward to helping them hunt the way Carrie is, so it can take some of the pressure off, and they can maybe get a college going for the younger kids.” 

This kid was fine with doing something he didn’t really want to do, so the younger kids could have a chance to do what they wanted? “Yeah, but you could teach in the school and help take some of the pressure off.” 

Ty laughed again. “You sound like you. I don’t know how many times we’ve had this conversation. I want to be a hunter. I’ll be good at it, maybe even great at it, but I guess you’ll find that out when we do that hunt in 2 weeks.” 

“What hunt?” 

Ty finished hammering in the nails on that board and said, “You and Beth were both hunting when you were our age in that other universe.” That wasn’t really an answer, but Dean knew where to go to get one. 

“I was raised to do this, and Beth was kind of raised to –“ 

Ty sighed in frustration and said, “And you don’t think we were? I may not have started when I was 4, but when I was 14, I saw my first Croat. It was my Dad. He came home from work and infected my Mom and sister. I turned 15 in Vegas and watched two of my kids be taken onto the back of one of the trucks as a birthday present from the demons. I never told anyone when my birthday was, because I didn’t want the demons to do what they did, but I didn’t know they could read your mind back then. 

I didn’t know who or what we were being sold to when it was my turn to go in one of the trucks, but I remember watching the demons walk away after they left us in the woods and thinking it was all over . . . until you and Beth showed up, and then I remember thinking we were in serious trouble when you told us your names, because from what I saw, everything the demons had told us about you was true with the way you destroyed those vampires. 

But then Beth shielded Claudia with her body when a vampire came out of nowhere . . . we saw Beth being this complete badass back at the campfire, but when there wasn’t time for her to think, the first thing that came naturally for her was sacrificing herself for a little girl she didn’t know. Even if you hadn’t gotten to it first, she probably still would’ve killed it, but that’s not the point. She was the first grown up we saw who was like us, willing to sacrifice herself for the kids, and you’re exactly the same way. That’s why we want to do what you do. It’s because we already were. We just didn’t know how to fight back until we met you.” 

Wow. Uh. He didn’t know what to say to that. This place kept doing that to him. Usually he could always come up with at least something to say even if it was completely wrong, but not here.


	13. Campfire Discussions

Cas leaned into Beth’s shoulder while they watched the kids around the bonfire and said, “Why do you think that?” 

Beth whispered back, “Because, I gave myself a paper cut to see what’d happen now that we were in this universe, and nothing happened. I felt it, and it drew blood, and he was fine. Either he isn’t him, or he’s the one who made his connection to me happen. I mean think about it. Everything he used to be worried about happening to me because of our connection started happening to him. I thought it didn’t happen in the last universe, because it was a different universe. Now I think that maybe he believed that’s what would happen with our connection, so he made it happen, but to himself, because he didn’t want it to happen to me. Now that he doesn’t know anything about it, it isn’t happening.” That was perplexing. 

“What about your side of the connection?” 

Beth shook her head and sighed. “I don’t know. We’d have to find a way to have a vetala or djinn dose Dean to be sure, and that’s probably unethical to do without telling him what we’re going to do first. My side of the connection didn’t start until I found out what he could, and then I started trying to find him using my Dean tracker, and then I intentionally pushed things with the Horseman of Famine. And then Dean intentionally started going into his soul to heal me. What if we’re just normal soulmates who made our connection happen, and it never would’ve happened otherwise?” 

That wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t given the level they’d been able to do things with their connection. “Maybe it’s because you aren’t as close as you used to be?” 

Beth slumped and then nodded reluctantly. “That’s a possibility too . . . my other other thought was that it could be because my soul is done now, and whatever we were doing to rebuild that involved our connection.” It could be that too. “But if it wasn’t there by design, why did Joshua tell me that it was meant to be something that would help us? Why did you tell us that?” 

He’d just been delivering a message he didn’t really understand after a really difficult trek through Hell to find Dean. “Joshua told me what it meant.” 

The look on Beth’s face got pensive. “So, Joshua told you the same thing he told me . . . And who do we know that Joshua used to talk to on at least an infrequent basis?” 

“You want to go ask Chuck?” 

Beth gave an annoyed shake of her head. “No, I don’t want to ask Chuck. He’ll just play coy with us. What if he knew what we were capable of doing if we knew we could, and he had Joshua plant the seeds in our heads to make it happen?” 

“Ask Chuck about what? What seeds were planted?” Cas and Beth looked over their shoulders at Sam, and Cas couldn’t hide his annoyance at seeing him. It’d taken almost no time at all for Sam to slip back into old patterns when he got here. It would be humorous if it weren’t so dangerous for Beth and anyone close to her. 

For now all he could do was keep getting reports from the kids in his History class on what they’d seen Sam do or heard Sam say, so he could monsitor the situation and keep Sam from creating problems with the non-hunter adults around here. The kids were all good at their jobs. Sam was being watched closely without feeling like he was, which was important, because if Sam felt like he was being watched, it might push Sam into being more aggressive. 

“We’re discussing Chuck’s prophecy capabilities . . . When we get them, do we do what we do because of his prophecies, or would we have done those things anyway. We had a situation a few months ago where he was given some faulty information and then passed it off to us, and it lead to some negative consequences. If that happened, then how reliable can his other prophecies be?” 

Cas shared a look with Beth and gave her a partial nod to acknowledge that he thought that had been a good cover. It stuck pretty close to the truth, and now he was thinking that it wasn’t that God had lied to Chuck, and Chuck had passed the wrong things along through Sam to Beth the way they’d thought back then. The lie had come straight from Chuck, because Chuck was God. Now he wondered what Chuck was waiting for with regards to their mission. 

Cas was 50% sure that Chuck was planning on waiting until Sam and Dean had enough of not remembering this life and wanted their memories back before he’d tell them that he’d give their memories back if they agreed to do the mission. The other half of Cas thought that maybe Chuck was waiting for them to return to something resembling their old selves before he gave their memories back. Chuck had said when they returned from training, he would ask them to go on the mission. Maybe Chuck was waiting for them to actually return, and this was the only way Chuck could think of to make that happen now that they were physically present.

Sam appeared to accept what Beth had told him and sat down before saying, “So, I hear you’re taking the older kids on a hunt in a few weeks, and then when that’s done, we’re all going on a tour of the camps.” 

Rogue wouldn’t go near the fire, so Dean had been running around the fire with Lily on his shoulders, and must’ve overheard what Sam had said, because he came over with Lily and breathed out, “Hey, so we’re . . . what are we doing?” 

Choosing to respond to Dean and not Sam, Beth said, “We were just talking about the hunting trip and the camp tour.” 

Dean put Lily down and took a seat on the ground next to them. “Yeah, I told Sam that these kids are gonna start runnin’ off to do hunts in the middle of the night if we don’t let them go on one soon. Better if they do it while we’re there and can keep an eye on things.” 

Before Sam could protest, Beth said, “Yeah, I was thinking that this week during hunter training, they could spend the first hour learning how to research a case. This case. I already got case files for all of them.” 

Sam asked her how she pulled that one off, and Cas rather enjoyed being able to answer that. “God gave them to her.” 

Dean focused on Beth and asked, “Are you sure with everything that’s going on right now, that’s a good idea?” 

Cas said that’s what he tried to tell her, but Beth disagreed with both of them. “It’s fine. I haven’t tapped into my soul since Cold Oak.” 

That wasn’t all there was to it. There was something that they didn’t understand about all of it, a missing piece of the puzzle. Unless it was for something big, like the vampire army, Cas didn’t think she should use it. Judging from the look Dean shared with him, Dean agreed. 

Sam decided to defend himself. “I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong or acting strange. I think I’m the voice of reason in an insane world, and I’m being painted as a villain.” 

Beth watched Rogue crawl over to Dean and said, “Nobody is saying you’re wrong, Sam. This place isn’t perfect. It’s just that some of the things you want aren’t possible, and you’re coming in from a place of pride thinking you know better than the rest of us. It’s that pride that you have to watch. That’s always been a big one for you, and I bring out the worst in people. If everyone is telling you to tone it down a few notches, then maybe it’s not them. Maybe it’s you.” 

“I don’t remember you being this mean before!” 

Beth laughed and shook her head. “Am I hurting your feelings by challenging you, Sam?” Sam stopped himself from saying what he was going to say, and Beth said, “You and I have been challenging each other since we met . . . I challenged you in this life by saying that Ruby was leading you down the wrong path and that killing Lilith was the wrong thing to do. You challenged me on everything, including being a bad mother, and you were probably right about that one. In our other life, you challenged me about becoming a hunter instead of going to college, and I ignored you. I challenged you on lots of things, including whether or not you would be the one to kill Azazel. Will I always look out for you? Yeah. Will I roll over and just take what you say as gospel or do whatever you want whenever you want it? No. Sometimes it feels like my entire reason for being is to annoy you, whether I want it to be or not, and the problem with that is that with me having this mark on my soul that connects me to God, you being annoyed with me all the time can have lethal consequences, not just for me, but Dean, Cas, Dad, and Rogue. Look at them and see if you holding onto this annoyance that leads to anger and wrath is worth hurting or killing one or all of them, because that’s where this is heading in case Jody didn’t make that clear.” 

Before anyone could say anything, Beth added, “And I’m sorry for snapping at you the other day. I know you’re just trying to help. If you really want to help, you can do it by teaching these kids how to research a case, because nobody is as good at that as you, and you can tell them why it’s important when they complain about having to read through case files . . . you can get them ready for this hunt, because it’s happening. 90% of these kids want to be hunters, and maybe 25% actually should be. 10% of them probably will. It’s better if they know what they can handle and what they can’t before we’re either gone, or they start running away from home to do it and get in some serious trouble they can’t get out of alone. 

If nothing else, this camp has taught them how to protect themselves and each other, so what happened to them when they were younger won’t happen to them again . . . and when we see these other camps, I want you to take a good look at the people that are in them and compare them to these kids, who we’re raising to be good people, first and foremost, above hunting and above education or skills, but of course that means you’d actually have to get to know these kids instead of having an idea in your mind of what a normal kid is and only seeing how these kids don’t match up to that . . . I think it’s about time for their next start charts,” before she got up to get the kids started on those. 

As soon as she was gone, Sam looked at Dean and said, “Have you ever noticed that she just talks and talks and won’t let anyone else say anything, and then after she’s made her point, she leaves, so you can’t say anything back?” 

Was Sam attempting to make a joke, or was he being serious? Dean sighed and said, “Sam, in all of her talking, did you actually listen to a word she said?” Sam looked like he was going to argue with Dean, so Cas got up to go help Beth. He was tired of all the arguing.


	14. Who's In?

“Somehow I don’t think this is what they had in mind when they were told that they were going on a hunt.” 

Dean was right. This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I told them that they would be going on a hunt either. 

“You said I was in charge of teaching them how to do research. They complained about having to do it, so now they know why they have to do it. Anyway, I think they’re having more fun doing this than they did going to see the Colorado camp.” 

Dean and I shared a look. Sam might be right about how this was a lesson on why research was important, but it was a bad way to teach it. The sanitorium had a lot of spirits in it. The files’d had news clippings, police reports, floor plans, patient records, and lots of other things that could’ve been useful in narrowing down who the spirits were or if patients were cremated and whether they had any belongings or if there might be spirits belonging to patients that went missing somewhere on the grounds and whether their bodies were ever found. Right now I was looking at about 250 teenagers who were digging up every single grave in the sanitorium cemetery without having any idea what graves might have a spirit show up to try and stop them or even if what they were doing would get rid of any of the spirits, and they were definitely not having any fun.

Dean pulled me aside and said, “You still have your file, right?” 

Yeah, I did, but it was the only one left. Sam burnt all the rest. “Yeah, but –“ 

“I didn’t even get a chance to see one of these files. Go get it. I won’t let him have it . . . Fuck trying to make him happy. Trying to make him happy might get one of them killed. When you’re that age, that’s what happens if you don’t put the research in . . . remember what happened with me on your first hunt?” 

Yeah. That spirit tried to hang him and very nearly succeeded. I turned towards my bus, and Dean went to go round the kids up, so we could go over the files with them. When Sam started bitching about it, Dean told him to shut up and go sit on the bus, and then took my file and started laying down the law for this hunt. 

“With a place this haunted and this big, we aren’t gonna get it all done in one night. We’re going after 1 spirit tonight. Start at the top of the pile. This one is from a blog . . . a couple of kids came out here one night on a dare and one of them got picked up by a woman and thrown down the stairs . . . since we can’t ask the kids who were there more than that, the best way to know if she was real or not is to go in there where they said they saw her and have a look around. If you get a look at her, you have to come back out and do more research. Go to the patient files and see if any patients match her description. Sometimes you’re lucky, and there’s a picture, or if you look at why she was admitted, you can find out if she was here for a crime, and maybe there’s an article about it in the paper. There’s almost always a picture in those . . . find out what her name was, if she died here, and if she died here, where her body is. 

I want the 10 oldest kids to come with me. We’re going in on the south side of the building and up to the second story of the southwest staircase to have a look around. The rest of you aren’t hunting tonight. There are plenty of spirits to go around, so you’ll get your chance. I want you guys to split up into groups of 10. If the group I take in with me finds her, we’re coming back out, and then I’ll show that group how to do the research to find her grave. Beth’s gonna come around and give the other teams their own cases and show you how to research those. 

The 10 going in with me need to keep their sawn offs loaded and ready, but keep your fingers off the trigger unless you feel a cold spot, or I tell you to shoot. You won’t kill a person if you shoot ‘em with rock salt, but it’ll hurt like a bitch, and I’m not in the mood to get shot or have any of you get shot. Got it?” They all nodded and started getting into groups, and I thought he handled that perfectly.

“Thanks for taking control of things earlier. It was derailing, and I wasn’t sure how to rescue it.” 

Dean offered me his flask and said, “He’s getting worse . . . We can’t keep letting him around those kids. I wasn’t kidding earlier when I said him doing what he did could get them killed. I mean, I’m holding onto the hope he thought it was a game of chicken to see which one of us caved first on stopping it before they dug too far and drew the wrong kind of attention, but . . . he isn’t happy I stopped it.” 

Handing his flask back, I said, “You thinking of taking him out on the road?” 

Dean shrugged. “I don’t know . . . I don’t know how this works. If it’s about you, keeping him away from you seems like the best idea, and I don’t think he’d ever do anything to me, but . . . I don’t trust him. What was he like before I made that deal with God?” 

“He finally got immune to it or grew out of it or whatever you want to call it.” 

Dean took that in and thought about it. “Then that’s who he needs to be again. He can’t stay like this . . . What do I have to do to make that happen?” 

“I don’t know.” _Chuck? Dean wants Sam to have his memories of this life back. If that doesn’t cut it as a request, because I said it’s what Dean wants, then I’m going to say, I’d like it if Sam had his memories of this life back, and you should probably know that Dean does too, because that seems like an important detail you should know, not that you don’t already, but I thought I’d make it official._ “I just asked if God could make it happen. If He doesn’t, then I think you probably know what God wants you to do.” 

Dean blew out a frustrated breath. “I’m not agreeing to anything until I know what it is. I wanna talk to him face to face. If he lives at the camp, then it can’t be that hard to set up a meeting.” 

“Now, or –“ 

Dean looked at the kids sleeping in the tents in the middle of our circle of buses and shook his head. “After we’re done here, we’re going back to the Kansas camp to pick up the rest of the kids, and then it’s where? Iowa and then Wisconsin?” I nodded, so he said, “It can wait until we get them home. Wouldn’t put it past God to send us somewhere else and leave these kids out here by themselves. I’ll just have to keep a close eye on Sam until then.” 

And that’s what he had to do, because Sam didn’t get his memories of this life back just because I asked for him to get them back, but I guess that made sense. It’s probably something Sam and Dean had to ask for themselves and in person when the time was right for them, I guess. 

We just had to finish off this hunt at the sanatorium and finish our tour, and then it’d be up to Sam and Dean to figure out what they wanted to do when they saw Chuck. Personally, I already knew I was going to sign onto the mission if it was what I thought it was, but if it wasn’t, then I needed more information the way Dean did, and no matter what the mission was, I was going to discuss it with the kids at the camp first. 

\--------------------------

“You’re fucking kidding me. Chuck is God? And you two have known this the whole time?” Cas and I shared a look at Dean’s outburst and nodded to confirm that we had. 

“And you didn’t tell us, why?” 

Cas stepped up to answer Sam’s question. “We had to wait until you came to us and said that you were ready to meet him. If he’d wanted you to see him before you were ready, he would’ve let you know who he was. We can’t influence your decisions on anything to do with this deal.” Before Sam could complain anymore, Cas added, “I believe we both gave you adequate clues to let you know to let us know when you were ready. I told you why we believe you don’t remember this life the first night we arrived. Beth has done the same. We both told you that God lives in the camp. If you’d really wanted to meet with him to discuss the situation with your memories, you would’ve come to us sooner. I still don’t think you really want to discuss getting your memories back from him. I think that Dean has been pushing you towards accepting this meeting for the last 6 weeks, and only after what happened a few days ago did he finally tell you that you had no choice in the matter, and that’s why you’re here.” 

Yeah, that hadn’t been a very pretty scene. We’d been at the Wisconsin camp, roughly where I got attacked. I wasn’t going to go into the main camp, because I didn’t trust the people who ran it, but I’d wanted to take Rogue for a walk and maybe get close enough to the walls that she could catch a peek at them through the trees. I’d wanted her to see something we’d build when we used to live here. 

When she saw the walls, I think she might’ve been impressed, because they were probably the biggest things she’d ever seen. We didn’t have anything like them in our camp, and we’d never taken her to an actual city, so it’s not like she ever saw skyscrapers or anything. She couldn’t take her eyes off of them, so I’d told her how we’d built them and our history of the place . . . maybe a little about her Uncle Adam, and then we’d started to head back. 

I took her by where my showdown with Randy happened. I just wanted her to know that she was a lucky girl, and that what happened there is why we had to leave here even though I loved this place. I was kind of pantomiming where everyone had been during the altercation. She was laughing, because she thought I was messing around, and then I went to show her where Abbey and Cameron had come from and heard a noise behind me, so I turned with my gun drawn, and Sam was holding her. I hadn’t known what to do. 

He was mostly giving out to me about how I should’ve been paying more attention, shouldn’t be telling her violent things, and how I shouldn’t be pointing a gun in my daughter’s direction, but I didn’t lower it. He hadn’t really spent any time with her, so picking her up and then deciding that he was going to walk off with her was a big ‘no no’ as far as I was concerned. I wasn't going to pull the trigger with him holding her, but it'd made him stop, and she could do something to help us both out. 

Until I told her to hit him, she thought this was a game. Then her face got serious, and she hauled off and punched him in the eye, and then she hit him in the face again, so he held her out away from him and started yelling at her and me. It was the distraction I needed to put my gun away and get closer, but when I was maybe 5 feet out, Dean showed up, took her from Sam, gave her back to me, and told me to take her back to the fishing camp, and he’d deal with it. 

We’d had the kids packed up and on the road by that night, and then we drove non-stop to get back to this camp, so Dean and Sam could finally talk to Chuck. _”Archangel Gabriel, Dad, we’re on our way to talk to Chuck about Sam and Dean – “_

“What’d I miss?” 

_Nothing. Yet._

“Hey, you know you don’t have to say Archangel Gabriel every time you want to talk to me, right? I can pick up Dad just fine.” 

No, I didn’t actually. “I thought maybe there was some kind of cosmic switchboard I had to use to be patched through to you.” 

Sam didn’t say anything, but he must’ve been bitching about something in his head, because as Dad took Rogue from Cas, he glanced at Sam and said, “Oh, that old chestnut . . . Sam’s being a pain in the ass again, so they don’t have any other choice.” Yeah, pretty much. 

Aside from the last few days and dealing with Sam’s increasing snarkiness, the last 2 months out on the road had been pretty good. The kids got to see friends in the Kansas and Wisconsin camps that they hadn’t seen in over a year, and they got to see what the other camps were like and what the other camps did as specialties. They also got to hunt and cleared out an entire sanitarium doing it. They’d done really well on the hunt. 

We’d had relatively few injuries. Some of the teens were finally able to admit to themselves that hunting isn’t what they wanted to do and that maybe they had more options available to them than they’d thought they had . . . most still said that becoming hunters is what they wanted, but they weren’t giving the kids that were considering going into science or baking or farming a hard time about it. They mostly said that wherever the non-hunters ended up, the non-hunters would still know how to keep the place safe, and if the non-hunters needed them to be there, they’d be there without question to help with whatever it was. 

Overall, it’d been a big morale boost that all of the kids had needed. Plus, now they knew that when Sam, Dean, Cas, and I left the camp that we were actually doing things that were important, not as important them, or we wouldn’t keep coming back, but important, and we were saving people. Now we just had to find out what Chuck wanted us to do to save more people.

\-------------------------------

“So, Beth was right? That’s what you want us to do.” 

Chuck sat back on the table behind him to answer Dean. “Pretty much. If Amara has to be released, then I only want her to be released in one place, because I know how that’s going to turn out.” 

Cas asked Chuck if he meant the main trunk of the tree, and Chuck nodded, so Dean asked, “Why us?” 

“Are you kidding me? Sam and Dean Winchester are responsible for this problem, so Sam and Dean Winchester are the only two who can fix it, and out of all the Sam and Dean Winchesters out there, you’re the two who have the best understanding of how time works and why the rules governing time have to be followed. You understand that there’s no such thing as a magic-reset button. Once something is done, it’s done, and if you try to reset it, you could destroy an entire universe and everyone that’s ever lived and died on it. You understand when you see a time loop, so you know they have to be completed, or Dean wouldn’t have saved Beth from that Rugaru when he went back in time . . . Plus, out of all of the Sam and Deans, you two are the only ones who have created a world where Amara will never be released, and then you did it again in another universe. You two are the right ones for the job.” 

Sam looked at me and said, “It’s because of her, right? You made this universe or timeline or whatever possible by putting those prophecies in it, so she’d be taken when she was born, and that’s basically what made all of us what we are in this timeline.” 

Chuck chose to ignore Sam and looked at Dean. “I can see why you want to get rid of this one and get yours back. He is losing against that dark side of his . . . You should hear the things he’s thinking and feeling right now.” Then he looked at Dad and said, “Beth is a rarity in these timelines in her own right, isn’t she Gabe? It’s not very often that a –“ 

Dad quickly interrupted him. “We don’t have to go there. You already know what I"m going to do.” 

_What was that about?_ Dad looked at me and said, “Nothing . . . you know how it is. I learned how to be a Trickster from the best Trickster there is.” 

Yeah, Chuck was definitely a Trickster God. Chuck looked at Rogue and said, “She gets a choice, but she’s too young to really understand,” before he looked at me, so I gave him my answer in my head.

_”You know I’m already signed on under the provision that I get to discuss it with the kids at the camp first, and you also know that I’m not leaving her behind again. And I know you know that she is the best way to get through to any of the other Dean Winchesters in these other timelines, because he’s a sucker for babies, and the thought that he could’ve had one if he’d had a slightly different life isn’t something he’s going to be able to resist for long . . . look at the way she’s got this Dean wrapped around her little finger without him being able to remember her. It’ll be the same way with them . . . and you wouldn’t have said she could be a part of the team if you didn’t know all of that.”_

“Nice sales pitch, Beth. What’s Castiel think?” 

Cas sighed and said, “You already know.” I was pretty sure he was signed on for this the way I was. That left Sam and Dean.


	15. The Mission

Sam looked around the room at the others, and it was hard to know what to do. He had the feeling that Gabriel would do this if he thought Beth and Cas were . . . In fact, Gabriel probably knew what they were going to do, because he knew what everyone was thinking. So, what was everyone going to do?

Sam couldn’t believe that a good Mom would give permission for her daughter to do something like this, but this was Beth they were talking about here, so she was probably going to go. Cas hadn’t gone on the last one, but if Cas thought Beth and Rogue were going, he’d probably do it too. 

That left Dean. If Dean stayed here, Sam would stay here. If Dean wanted to go with the rest of them, Sam would go with the rest of them. “Not the way this works, Sam. Didn’t let you do it that way the last time, and I won’t let you do it this time either. You have to make the decision for yourself. Do you want your memories of this life back, or not? Do you want to go on this mission, or not. They’re mutually exclusive. You don’t have to do one to do the other.” 

Dean perked up at that. “What? I thought –“ 

Chuck interrupted him to explain. “Cas and Beth were right about me not wanting you to make this decision until you were ready, and maybe it was a way to get you to want to see me faster, but it might’ve also been about teaching the two of you what it’s going to be like for the Sam and Dean Winchesters in other universes if you approach them. How well have you adapted to this life without remembering it? Did you understand it better in the last life until you saw it, and then couldn’t believe what you were seeing, or could you not really fathom it until you got here and saw it for yourself? Are they going to believe you? Are you going to have to make them change their path without talking to them? What changed your perspectives? Was it a sales pitch? Was it a person? Was it an event? What’s it going to take for you to change in another life?” 

Oh, that was good, and it made perfect sense now that Sam thought about it. He gave Beth something of a smug look, because she’d gotten that one at least partially wrong, if not mostly wrong, and Chuck said, “I can’t wait to see what happens when you get your memories if you decide to go that way, Sam.” 

Putting his attention back on Chuck, Sam said, “So, just to be clear. I could stay here and get my memories back. I could stay here as I am. I could go on this mission as I am, or I could go on this mission remembering everything.” 

Chuck nodded, and Dean looked at Beth and Cas. “Which one do you guys prefer? I think the old me was a dick, and I’ve heard he was insane from both of you.” 

Dean wanted to stay who he was. That much was pretty obvious. Beth and Cas didn’t answer, and Chuck said, “I’m almost tempted to have them break the rules, so they can tell you what they think, but you need to make this decision on your own too, Dean.” 

Looking back at Chuck, Dean said, “How much time do we have to make our decisions?” 

Chuck looked at his wrist, like he was looking at a watch, but he wasn’t wearing one. “I want an answer before you leave this room, but I don’t want you to say it out loud.” 

Now Sam suddenly felt the pressure. It didn’t seem like this was something they could go back on once they made the decision. He guessed that neither decision they had to make was going to be easy. Did he want to remember who he was in this life? He had a full life in another timeline. There’d been some rough patches, but overall, he’d gotten through it, and he’d done it by being good. 

In this life, he’d destroyed the world. Did he want to remember that? Apparently, they all thought it was the only way he wouldn’t destroy the world again or kill Dean and the rest of their family. Right now they were in a situation where their family was fractured. There were those who remembered this life and those who didn’t, and it frustrated him. Dean seemed to be coping with it pretty well. Dean could probably stay who he was and be fine. If Sam got his memories of this life back, and Dean didn’t, would that mean that he and Dean wouldn’t have the same relationship they did now? Would things be more or less strained than they already were? And that was all just on the memory side of things. 

What if he and Dean ended up in different timelines? What if Dean stayed here, and Sam left, because he thought Dean was going to go, and Dean thought he was going to stay? “I have a question, uh, a few questions, actually.” Sam thought the fact that Dean had some questions was good. It meant he was thinking this through. “How does it work when we get to these other timelines? Do we stick together, or are we split up, or do we even all go to the same timelines? And is it on some kind of a timer? How do we know when the job is done? Do we just go to another timeline, and what happens if we die in another timeline? Do we go to Heaven in that timeline, or do we come back here?” Uhh, yeah, Dean definitely had a lot more than one question, and now Sam wanted to know the answers to those questions too.

Chuck looked at Beth and said, “Cerebus is here, and he’s fine. He made the jump without any problems.” 

_Why did he answer whatever Beth was thinking, and not Dean?_

Gabriel looked at Sam and said, “Use your brain, Sam. Why do you think he answered that question?” 

He didn’t know. She forgot about Cerebus until now? Wait. Did that mean? “We can bring people with us when we jump timelines? But how does that work, and what happens if they’re already in this timeline, but dead? Wouldn’t that mean that when the newcomers die, there will be two of them, or does it have to be a special case, like with Cerebus, where once they’re dead, they disappear . . . like an angel, and archangel.” Before anyone said anything, Sam added, “So, let’s say you were in a timeline where Gabriel was about to be killed by Lucifer, and we take him from there and put him in another timeline where he can do some good on stopping the Darkness from being released, is that allowed?” 

Gabriel muttered, “What am I, chopped liver? You don’t need a douche version of me to help you in another timeline if you’ve got the real deal with you. And you’d have to know the next timeline you’re going to go to before you go there for that to work, or are you just going to keep another archangel around until we find somewhere to drop him off? The other versions of me out there are dickheads. I wouldn’t get along with any of them now. Talk about sparking off another Apocalypse. Try again.” 

Sam retorted, “So, she thinks she can replace you in other timelines, and that doesn’t –“ 

Beth in disgust said, “My Dad can’t be replaced,” and Sam was going to say something until Gabriel interrupted him again. 

“Stop while you’re ahead, Sam. His answer about Cerebus answered what Dean asked about what happens if you die in another timeline. You’ll only get an afterlife if there’s not another one of you there. Or let’s say you go somewhere where you’re immortal. In that instance, you dying would mean that you would go to Heaven as long as the immortal Sam never dies . . . if he does, then stop pissing people off, and maybe Death will let you keep your spot and make the other one go nowhere. If you’re dying somewhere and you have a duplicate, then that duplicate needs to die and have his soul erased, so you can take their place in the afterlife, and if that doesn’t happen, then you go nowhere. Short answer. Don’t die. Which version of you do you think knows how to keep that from happening to you or anybody else who goes on this mission if you decide to go on it.” Then Gabriel looked at Chuck and said, “Next question.” 

Chuck’s eyebrows rose. “Getting awfully close to breaking those rules, Gabriel. I thought we talked about this.” 

Beth quickly responded, “Oh, please. He wasn’t giving advice. He was just translating Trickster in the room for those who aren’t fluent in it,” and Chuck looked at Gabriel who shrugged. Chuck laughed and then looked at Dean. 

“Pretty much what he said, but I’d also add that if you do decide to bring anyone with you the way Sam said, you can, but if they die in a universe that isn’t theirs, then the same thing goes for them. If you can convince someone to leave their universes, they have to know that ahead of time and agree to it, or no dice . . . There are definitely some that I wouldn’t bring anywhere, or you’re just moving the problems to a different branch . . . sometimes you’ll be split up, and once you’re done with a job, you’ll go to the next universe. It’ll be without warning the same way you came here, but there is no time limit on this. And if you finish the mission, I’ll bring you all back to the moment you left . . . good as new, so nobody here will notice much of a difference.” 

Well, they seemed fairly well informed even though Sam was sure that there were things that Chuck was omitting. Maybe Chuck was even playing around with his words too. It also didn’t really make the decision any easier when Sam didn’t know what Dean would do. Sam thought about it, and if Dean was asking those kinds of detailed questions, Dean was more than thinking about going on this mission. What if they both did the mission as they were? He wasn’t sure he could do that without it eventually leading to him killing the other people on the team. What if he got bad enough to kill Dean? Then he’d never see Dean again, because Dean would disappear. 

Sam couldn’t let that happen, and if the him that remembered this life was past all of that, then he had to take the memories of this life back, but only if he was going on this mission. What was his gut telling him? They had a chance to save everything that’d ever been created and everything that ever would be created, and if they didn’t do this, then they’d be relying on the idiot versions of themselves to fix this when the idiot versions of themselves were the ones who made it happen. They’d be here at the camp one-second and the next they and everyone they ever knew and loved would be wiped from existence without any warning. They had to do it to keep that from happening, or he did. Okay, he was ready. He’d do it, and he wanted his memories back, so he could do the best possible job that he could. 

Chuck looked like he relaxed marginally and then smiled. “Well, then I guess it’s decided. You should probably go tell the kids.” 

_Seriously? Was I the last one to decide?_ Sam looked at Dean, and Dean shrugged before he headed out the door. Catching up to Dean, who was on his way back to the truck to pick up his weapons bag, Sam said, “Hey, are you getting your memories back?” 

“Yeah. Think it’s about time Rogue got to see her Dad, and if that guy is the best guy to bring everyone home, then I’m tagging him in for this.” 

Oh. Sam hadn’t been sure. “Yeah, I’m supposed to be getting mine back too, so what gives? Why don’t we have them yet?” 

Dean shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Maybe he’s waiting until he sends us wherever he’s sending us, or maybe he’ll do it after we talk to the kids and let them know what we’re doing?” Maybe they should drag that out a little, because maybe Sam wasn’t ready for this quite yet.

\-------------------

“So, we won’t even notice you’re gone?” 

Beth looked at the kid that’d asked that and said, “If we succeed, you shouldn’t notice much . . . I don’t know what much means. Maybe we’ll be wearing different clothes, or we’ll go from standing here like this to being behind you?” 

One of the other kids asked, “What happens if you don’t succeed?” 

Beth shared a look with her Dad and then looked at the kids. “The end of everything . . . the entire forest of trees gets wiped out.” 

Sam started to say, “Do you really think they need to –“ and one of the kids said, “Yeah, we do. Everytime they leave, we know they’re going to do something dangerous, and we live with it, because we know they’re going to make the world a better place, either by killing monsters or saving people. On something this dangerous, we need to know what’s at stake if they don’t do it. Now we know, and we don’t like it, but we know it has to be done, and if anyone can do this, it’s them . . . and you when you stop being a big flaming jerk,” which made Dean start laughing much to Sam’s annoyance. 

Another kid asked, “We’ll agree to it on one condition.” Beth nodded to let the kid know he could go ahead, so he said, “You do something about the witches in New Orleans when you get back, and then we want you to retire. Let us handle the rest.” 

Beth looked taken back by that. To be honest, so did Cas. Dean laughed until he saw they were being serious. Gabriel just laughed. “No, we’ll start doing hunts with you, but one hunt does not make you hunters. It’s going to be a long time before those training wheels come off. Probably not until you’re closer to Sam’s age.” Beth seemed absolutely sure about that. 

Dean livened the mood by saying, “Besides, we’re not old enough to retire . . . we’ve only got like 10-15 years on you. It’s not like we’re Rufus.” 

One of the kids said, “Well, at least say that you’ll do the hunts closer to home. It’s been really good having you around the last few months.” 

Beth smiled and said, “I think we could –“ 

The next thing Sam knew, he was falling to his knees and clutching his head as memory after horrible, disgusting, vile memory bombarded him one right after the other. The things he did, the people he’d hurt and killed . . . _I change my mind! Take them back._ Chuck didn’t listen. They were like an avalanche, Sam couldn’t control no matter how hard he fought against them. The memories were suffocating him. He was horrified, not just with him, but by the acts themselves. They were terrifying. It’s like he was living out his worst nightmares . . . He could barely process that he’d been the one making them happen. 

At some point, they had to stop, and they did, but by then, he didn’t know who he was . . . He wasn’t the same person he was 5 minutes ago. He knew that. It was extremely difficult to reconcile that person with this one and know that both of them were the same person. And the person he’d been 5 minutes ago hadn’t been that great of a person. Well, he hadn’t been since he got here. _Actually where am I? The kids . . . Why is there carpet here?_ It was pretty disgusting, actually, and he wasn’t here 5 minutes ago either. 

Where was Dean? He didn’t hear him? Where was Beth? Sam needed to give her a hug and say he was sorry for being a jerk. Where was Cas? Was Cas an angel now, or still human? Sam looked up and found that he was in a dingy motel room, but he wasn’t alone. “Rogue?” 

She smiled when he said her name and screeched, “Sam!” Well, at least she recognized him now, not that he could blame her for not recognizing him sooner. He’d been a brat pretty much from the start. 

“Hey, have you seen your Mom and Dad or Cas?” 

She shook her head, and crawled over the bed, so she could wrap her arms around his neck and say, “Want Sam.” 

That right there was worth it. Hearing that and having it mean something to him. It was definitely worth remembering all the bad things he’d done. He smiled and rubbed her back while he stood with her. “I missed you too.” 

Sam was in the middle of looking around the room for his bags, her bag, and a phone when the motel door opened. Keeping Rogue close to him, Sam pulled a gun on whoever it was. Could’ve been anyone, like housekeeping, but it wasn’t. Instead he found himself staring into the face of himself, also aiming a gun . . . just without the baby.


	16. Purgatory

Blinking a couple of times, I looked around the woods, while my eyes adjusted to the dim light and heard the sounds of a scuffle to my right, so I grabbed my angel blade, and my weapons bag and headed off in that direction. When I got there, it was just in time to see Dean take the head off of something. He looked like my Dean again, so that was good. He must’ve gotten his memories back. I wondered if we’d be okay now. “Hey, do you have any idea where we are?” 

I didn’t get the reaction I was expecting, which would’ve really just been a simple, ‘Yes,’ or ‘No.’ Instead, I found myself being thrown back first into a tree. I was just fast enough to bring my angel blade up in time to block whatever the hell he was using as a weapon, but I couldn’t really move if I wanted to keep that weapon from cutting my head off. “Fuck it! You’re not my Dean.” I think he was momentarily surprised by that, but not surprised enough. I took a body shot to the left and an elbow from somewhere before he flipped me over, and I had to roll out of the way before he could try to take my head again. 

Getting to my feet, I said, “Back the fuck off . . . I’m not going to hurt you . . . You haven’t seen a kid around here, have you? ‘Bout 18 months old . . . brown hair like me, green eyes . . . She might’ve called you Dad, cuz you look just like him?” 

There, now he was suitably confused, and that bought me a couple of seconds that I didn’t do anything with, because I heard a voice behind me say, “Well, what do you know, Chief . . . You ain’t the only human in this place no more.” 

_What? Sonofabitch!_ “Am I in fucking Purgatory?” 

Dean took a step back. “Yeah, how’d you get here?” 

“God’s an asshole.” 

Dean relaxed a little with a brief laugh, but he was still on edge, and now I genuinely didn’t know what to do, so to get away from him and Benny, who was making me uncomfortable in my blind spot, I kept my angel blade out to keep them away from me and backed towards the nearest tree. When my back hit, I looked up. This tree was climbable. I put it between us and was up it in no time. 

Looking down at them, I realized neither one of them had moved. Now they were both just giving me weird looks. “What the hell are you doing?

Yeah, see, that’s pretty much what Dean’s look had said he was thinking before he said it. “Getting to higher ground?” 

He shared a look with Benny, and breathed out another laugh. “She’s really human?” 

Benny seemed pretty sure about it. “She smells like a human, and I can hear her heart beating . . . It’s pretty steady for someone that just got here and had you punchin’ on her.” 

Dean looked back up at me. “What’s your name?” 

_Really? Are we doing this now?_ “Beth.” 

Looking around the woods, Dean said, “Well, Beth, why don’t you come down, and we can talk?” 

I looked at Benny. “Probably not a good idea. He’s got a deal with you, right? You take him out of here, and he’ll get you to the portal . . . He doesn’t have any use for me. He may have given up humans, but the other monsters around here haven’t, and I’m sure there are plenty of ways he could screw me over when a fight gets too hot.” 

Benny swung his axe type thingy over his shoulder and said, “Might suit me better if I double my odds.” 

“Are you fucking kidding me? I say all of that crap, and neither one of you asks me how I know it? No way am I coming down until you two leave. I don’t know how many streams there are here, but your Cas is by some stream somewhere . . . maybe my Cas is there too, so I’ll race you to them.” 

Dean looked down and scratched the back of his head before he looked up at me again. “You’re a psychic, right? That’s how you know all that? This ain’t Disneyland. It’s Purgatory. We’d have a better chance of getting out of here if we work together.” 

Looking around the forest, I replied, “It’s my kind of Disneyland, and I bet deep down, you feel the same way.” 

That caught him off guard, and he cleared his throat while he looked around again. “Well, we’re gonna go . . . good luck gettin’ out of here on your own.” 

_I won’t be on my own, or I hope I won’t be. Where are my Dean and my Cas and my Sam and my Dad and my daughter?_ “If you see another Dean or a little girl who looks like me, don’t kill them . . . please. Same goes for if you see two of Cas or a Sam who isn’t your brother.” 

He stopped walking and slumped a little before he turned back around. “What are you doing here, Beth?” 

“You wouldn’t believe if I told you.” 

“Try me.” 

_Okay, here goes nothing._ “Time travel? Honestly, Purgatory is probably better than where I’m from now.” 

He looked like he was seriously regretting the ‘Try me,’ statement, but humored me by saying, “So, you’re from the future?” 

“No, an adjacent timeline . . . or I guess it’s easier if I just call it an alternate universe . . . one where you met me, and we had a daughter, and Sam killed off most of the planet trying to take over for God . . . He’s okay now, and he wasn’t the only one. Crowley and Eve and the archangel Raphael were fighting over everything too . . . along with Eve’s generals, the Alpha Changeling and the Alpha Vamp . . . Except for Sam they’re all dead now, and so are the Alpha Werewolves, Skinwalker, and Shapeshifter . . . now a lot of the monsters are running around without leaders, and we have to figure out how to kill the hybrids that Eve and Crowley made . . . most of the angels are dead, because we were up in Heaven and started a civil war between Michael and Raphael, and Raphael released the army from the Abyss in Hell . . . some of the remnants of that army are still running around on Earth, and now my Cas hates being an angel, so he’s human, and I’m wearing a vial of his grace around my neck for safe keeping in case he wants it back . . . oh yeah, and the Leviathan are loose and set up a camp in Georgia, but God sent their leader back to Purgatory after we made a deal with him . . . Guess he still found a way to send at least one of us to Purgatory, and I’m not entirely sure what the other Leviathan have been doing for the last 2 months . . . I mean they’re spreading out, but that’s probably a good thing, because they’re like garbage disposal picking up all the Croats . . . oh yeah, we had an outbreak of the Croatoan virus too . . . Uh, we’ve only been able to save 10,000 people in the whole of North America, and uh . . . things went really wrong for us if you couldn’t tell, so yeah, Purgatory doesn’t worry me too much.” 

He laughed again. “Any of that true?” 

Slowly nodding, I looked him in the eye and said, "All of it.” 

His smile fell. “You got a way to prove it?” 

“You mean other than you running into another you that’s wearing silver, so you know he’s not a shifter?” He shrugged, so I pulled the vial of Cas’s grace out from under the collar of my shirt. It was pretty bright. My Dad gave it to me to hold onto when we got back from our training mission, but Cas didn’t know that. Neither did anybody else. I put it away again and said, “And I didn’t really think about it until now, but his grace might be a magnet for the Leviathan here. I don’t know how that works. I just know that your Cas is hiding from you, because he thinks he is a beacon for them . . . uh, that might be another reason for me not to get too close to you.” 

Dean looked conflicted, like he wasn’t sure if he could deal with my particular brand of crazy on top of everything else going on here, but he didn’t look like he thought he could leave me here either. Benny nudged Dean to get him going, so I said, “It’s fine. You can go.” 

He took half a step to turn away and then stopped and looked back up at me. “Michael and Raphael?” I nodded, so he said, “So, Michael didn’t go into the cage?” 

“No, Sam released the Croatoan virus instead of going in the cage.” 

He took that in and then asked me another test question. “What happened to Lucifer?” 

I smiled. “The archangel Gabriel gave us bullets made out of an archangel blade, so my Dean killed Lucifer in Detroit with a sniper rifle.” 

Frowning in confusion, he asked, “Why would the archangel Gabriel do that?” 

_Should I tell him? Probably not, but I am going to anyway._ “He’s my Dad.” He laughed again, so I said, “He is. He took me to football games and taught me how to find the right bookies. We made snowmen together, and when I got older, if I didn’t ask him for help, he’d blow them up or make them melt in a matter of seconds, so he could get me to ask him to help me build them again. I just didn’t know he was the one doing it, because I didn’t know he was an angel.” 

“So, he’s like your adopted Dad or your real Dad?” 

“Both . . . I thought he was my real Dad and then I was told he wasn’t, and then I found out he was my adopted Dad, and after that I found out he was my real Dad.” 

Finally, he had something he thought he could use. “So, what does that make you?” 

I smiled again and said, “Human . . . Raphael stole me the day I was born, took out my grace and tore out half of my soul. He left me in solitary confinement in the prison in Heaven, and put the other half of my soul in my body. I didn’t get it back until you died and went to Hell.” 

“Yeah, how’d you do that?” 

_Here we go._ “I made a deal with God and told him I’d help him out with a few things, if he killed my worse half and let me have my body back . . . He made my Dad take me during the 4 months you were in Hell, but I was a mess, so my Dad turned me into a baby and raised me for those 4 months . . . he hid me in different times in our universe, so Raphael wouldn’t find me . . . Uh, he brought me back when I was 29, but I thought I was 35 . . . I wasn’t . . . and while he had me, he showed me a TV show about you and Sam . . . it went way into the future, so I’m not a psychic, but it’s how I know you got here after killing Dick Roman, and it’s why I know about the alliance you made with Benny.” He started to walk away again, so I shouted, “And because of that meeting, I can talk to God, and he listens . . . he’s still an asshole, but he gives me things when I ask unless he wants me to figure something out on my own, and then he doesn’t.” He’d had enough, so I yelled loud enough for him to hear, “God, it’d be awesome if everyone I know in this universe’s Purgatory was where this universe’s Cas is.” 

Not even a second later, I was standing by a creek looking at Cas . . . I knew it wasn’t my Cas, because he had a trench coat on, and . . . _Here we go. Fight your instincts. Stand here for 3, 2, 1_ . . . Immediately after that, I had and arm around my throat, and the tip of an axe pointed at my temple. “Drop the blade.” 

_Aww. Poor Purgatory Dean._ “Not a chance. I’m letting you do this . . . Uh, why don’t you look to your left?” 

He did, and then I was looking to his left too as he pulled me around in front of him. My Dean looked at me and said, “You could’ve just told him you’re letting him do that, so I don’t kill him.” 

_I guess I could have._ “I’m trying to defuse the situation, not make it worse. He’s had a pretty rough time of it here, and I did just kind of spring the God thing on him. Cas . . . keep an eye on your double. He’s starting to look like he’s thinking about helping this Dean . . . Dean, don’t kill the vampire. He’s this Dean’s friend.” 

My Dean relax a little, because I’d called his next move right and nodded to let me know he’d cool it before he pulled the silver amulet out from under the collar of his shirt. “Pure silver . . . I’m not a shifter. Let her go, and we can get the fuck out of here . . . Not sure when her next God request can happen.” 

He paused to look at me, so I thought, _‘Chuck, would you mind getting us out of Purgatory?’_ and got nothing, so I shook my head, and my Dean said, “But we’ll have a better chance of getting out of here if we work together.” 

I whispered to the Dean holding onto me, “See, I told you he’s you,” and my Dean gave me a look that told me things were about to get bad, so I figured that the Dean holding onto me was about to be the one to make them that way. If anyone would know how to read him, it’d be my Dean, so I did a couple of moves to loosen this Dean’s hold on me and used his axe against him to flip him over my back before I made fast work of getting away from him while he got to his feet. Now I was near my Dean, and my Cas was over talking to this universe’s Cas. I guess they had a lot to discuss. This Cas was probably at a real low . . . maybe. Depended on how this universe was different than the one I saw on TV.

“Hate to break it to you, Chief, but they’re both human too . . . Not really sure what you wanna do about it.” 

Dean kept his eyes on my Dean and said, “How’d you kill Lucifer?” 

“Shot through the right eye from 3 blocks away. Finished him off with another one to the heart. Got the halo points from Gabriel. He made ‘em outta Raphael’s archangel blade.” Dean asked my Dean how we got here, and my Dean shook his head with a smile. “God’s a dick . . . a heads up would’ve been good. He dropped a shit ton of memories on me right when I landed . . . If it wasn’t for my Cas, a couple of werewolves would’ve torn me up.” 

Purgatory Dean looked at me for an explanation for some reason, so I said, “The last time we were in another timeline, we didn’t remember our life in the Apocalyptic-timeline I was telling you about, and when we came back to our Apocalyptic-timeline, God kept Dean and Sam from remembering the Apocalyptic-life until they agreed to meet with him. It took a few months. God must’ve given him his memories of our real life back to him the second he got to Purgatory. It’d be like having an entire lifetime’s worth of memories downloaded into your brain in about a minute. You can’t think about anything else . . . Or move . . . mostly you just fall to the ground and clutch your head until it’s over.” 

Purgatory Dean didn’t look like he knew what to do with any of that, and then he slumped a little. “I don’t get it. Are you guys here to help me get out of here?” 

My Dean shrugged. “We don’t know. All we know is that we have to make sure you and your brother don’t fuck up the universe . . . If getting you out of here does that, then yeah . . . might take more, like making sure you don’t do stupid shit once you’re out, and if we don’t think you can do that, we’ll have to ask you to go back with us to our universe where you can’t possibly fuck things up any worse than they already are.” 

Dean asked if things were really that bad there, and my Dean said, “We’ve only been able to find about 10,000 people in almost 3 years, but it’s not all bad. We just killed what’s left of the vampires in North and South America . . . except for like 30 of them that got away, and the hybrids are something new. Crowley liked to breed things with wendigos, so none of them are easy to kill . . . keeps things interesting.” 

Then Purgatory Dean looked at my Cas. “What about him?” 

My Dean looked over his shoulder at Cas. “He’s human, but he’s a hell of a hunter. He’s not a fan of angels right now . . . probably won’t get along with your Cas for long . . . looks like he’s already getting annoyed with him.” Then my Dean looked at Benny. “What about him?” 

“He’s the only reason I’m still alive. He knows the way out, and I’m bringing him out with me . . . told him we had to get Cas first. I’ll vouch for him.” 

My Dean said that was good enough for him and then asked if we were gonna get out of here. The other Dean said he’d let us go with him for now, but if any of us put our foot out of place, we were gone. That seemed fair, and I guess that’s how the first introduction we had with one of the other Deans went. I think the only reason it worked as well as it did was because we were in Purgatory where the other Dean might’ve been more likely to tentatively accept that there was a lot more weird shit possible than he ever thought there was.

I was sure Benny had no idea what to think. It was a little much for him, and now he had 4 hunters and an angel he didn’t particularly like with him. It did quadruple his odds of getting out of here though. I wondered if he knew it’d be as hard as it was going to be for him to stay clean when he got out of here. Probably not, or he wouldn’t want out of here as bad as he seemed to want to get out of here. On the other hand, he had an old score to settle, and that was a pretty strong motivation. 

As Benny turned to lead us out of there, Purgatory Dean looked at my Dean and said, “You have a kid?” 

Even though he’d already shifted to being on high alert now, my Dean still answered. “Yeah, I just spent the last 3 months having her call me ‘Not Dad,’ cuz she knew I wasn’t her Dad . . . I mean I was, but I couldn’t remember being her Dad, and she knew it . . . have some things to make up for when I see her again.” 

_If he read her their book, that’d do it. Other than that, he doesn’t have to make anything up to her._

Looking down at me, my Dean said, “Yeah, she’s the easy one . . . have some things to make up for with you too . . . not sure how, but I’ll think of something.” Well, he could start by not getting pissed about anything I may or may not do on our trek through Purgatory.


	17. He Is You

Dean used his machete to slice through the neck of the monster he’d just thrown over his back and then turned to take the head of whatever it was that was running up on his right. As soon as he did that, Beth was there in a flash to stab it through the heart as it fell, and then she went sprinting off somewhere else. “What is she doing?” 

Dean glanced at the other Dean and said, “Head and heart are kind of standard protocol when we’re trying to figure out how to kill somethin’ we don’t already know how to kill . . . not sure what the hell these two were,” before he stabbed his machete down through the heart of the headless body of at his feet. 

“No, I mean where’s she going?” 

Dean watched her get to the base of a tree and said, “Watch this,” before she climbed up to the first branch and started running across it until she had to jump to the next tree and pull herself up to that branch and then ran across it. She never stopped playing Tarzan after they invented it when they were 6, so she only ever got better at it. 

The other Dean watched her go and shook his head. “There are things in the trees too . . . probably not a good idea –“

“If there are, she’ll handle it . . . probably thinking that if she’s up there, she can get the jump on something before it can get to us since the attacks have been coming from that direction for a while now.” The other Dean was going to say something else, so Dean said, “She’s having fun. Let her,” before he went back to following Benny.

He heard Cas saying, “Of course you’ve made mistakes that big. You’re an angel . . . Say you’re sorry and mean it. Don’t do it again, and stop being weak . . . I can’t believe you left him as soon as he got here. That’s when he needed you most. If you were afraid the Leviathan would make things worse for him, then you should’ve stayed by his side and fought them . . . sacrifice yourself in the heat of battle if need be, but to leave him without warning . . . Start by apologizing for that, and then apologize for betraying him for a year . . . and killing most of Heaven was probably a good thing. Angels are a scourge on the universe. If you stay here, Naomi will send troops down to retrieve you, and then she will reprogram you to do what she wants, and then she’ll make you try to kill Dean . . . Staying here would be far worse than if you left . . . and he has spent all of this time looking for you instead of getting out of here . . . Going with him now only to trick him into going through the portal without you is how you want to repay him for all of the time he’s wasted to find you? You are a disgrace.“ 

The other Dean came up beside Dean and said, “I can see what you mean. Is he gonna get it out of his system soon?” 

Watching Cas, Dean shook his head. “Probably not . . . He gives Gadreel shit all the time, but he’s not wrong . . . You haven’t really seen how bad angels can be.” 

“But he’s Cas. He – “

Beth shouted, “Heads up,” and a fresh wave of monsters came pouring through the trees to their right about 30 seconds later. He watched the other Dean when they got down to a handful of monsters. That guy could fight . . . He was fast . . . acted without thinking. He was good. He’d definitely fit into their world without any problems. Dean kept going back to what Chuck said about bringing people with them . . . asking someone to do that until they died and went nowhere was a big thing to ask, if that even happened. They might just end up in Death’s lock up. Gabriel hadn’t said anything about that, but Beth was supposed to disappear too when she died, and she didn’t. She went to Death’s lock up. God ruled over life, but Death made the decisions on death. Maybe selling Death’s lock up to this guy was the way to go. It sure would be easier to bring him with them than it would be to stick around however long they had to stay around until they’d done enough to change this guy’s fate. 

“You trust me more than he does . . . not sure if that makes you dumb or just used to workin’ with monsters.” 

Dean looked over at Benny. “Who says I trust you?” 

Benny nodded, like that’s what he’d thought, and said, “So you’re used to workin’ with monsters then.” 

“One of our best hunters is half-Amazon and half-succubus. We used to work with werewolves. They’d wear these collars that kept them from changing, but their senses were the same as a normal werewolf. They were ex-military too, so they were well trained . . . exactly the kinda guys you want fighting alongside you when the world ends . . . and then most of ‘em got cured and turned into dicks . . . felt threatened by the guys who decided to stay werewolves and killed ‘em all. I’m still pissed about that. They were good men. The only reason they stayed werewolves was to protect their fucking camp. Two of ‘em had human kids, and they’re two of the best kids you’d ever meet . . . Demons made them both watch their Dads get turned into monsters a few months before that, so they thought their Dads were gone, but then they got ‘em back . . . They might’ve been werewolves when they got ‘em back, but they were back, and now they’re both orphans again. It’s bullshit.” 

Cas from this universe looked over at him and said, “There is no way to cure werewolves,” and Dean’s Cas said, “You don’t know anything. Do you have –“ 

Sighing, Dean said, “Lay off, Cas,” before he addressed the other Cas. “We had a tablet for shifter-type monsters. The cure was in there.” The Cas from here started to argue with that, and Dean said, “There are 10 tablets, not 3 or 4 or however many are here. We got all 10. That’s why our universe looks the way it does.” 

The other Dean wanted to know why, so Cas said, “If you collect the power from all 10 tablets, you can take God’s power away from him, and he dies. Everything he created gets destroyed, but whoever has that power becomes the God of his own universe.” 

The other Dean looked over in Beth’s direction and said, “That’s what your brother was after when he killed off everyone?” 

Dean gave a half-nod. “Yeah, Sam thought if he got the power of God, he’d be able to go back and change things, so Mom would never walk in that nursery . . . You know, give us normal lives. Started thinking that nothing he did mattered, because he could just go back and erase it, like it never happened . . . Took long enough for me to figure out what he was planning, and I tried telling him that if he became God, everything would disappear, but I don’t know how your brother is . . . Mine doesn’t listen to anything I say if he thinks he’s right . . . and it was too late anyway. I didn’t know it, but he’d already let a truck with those vaccines full of the Croatoan virus out of the Nivius headquarters and made a deal with Crowley to get the werewolf tablet and Kevin in exchange for Beth . . . Crowley showed up to collect after we got back from killing Lucifer.” 

The other Dean asked why Crowley would make a deal for Beth, so Dean said, “She was the only one other than God who knew where all 10 tablets were. Sam didn’t know that. Crowley did. She just couldn’t remember where they were at the time, because her Dad hid the memories of where they were until she got good enough at hunting that she could pass his tests, I think . . . she didn’t start remembering until a couple of months after the outbreak happened.”

The other Dean asked him if her Dad was really Gabriel, and Dean smiled. “Yeah, he is . . . didn’t know it until maybe 9 months ago . . . just thought he was the one that raised her the second time around.” 

“What’s that like? I mean I’m not sure about you, but I hunted him, and he’s a pain in the ass.” 

Dean laughed and said, “I hunted him too . . . thought he was a Trickster the first time we ran into him at a university and –“ 

The other Dean quickly finished off what he was going to to say. “He sent a professor out the window for sleeping with his students . . . had an alligator eat the guy in charge of animal testing? I did that hunt too. Did he kill you –“ 

“At least 100 times that I can’t remember, but Sam can? Yeah, and he made Sam and me take a trip through TV land. That’s when we found out he was Gabriel, but none of us knew that he raised Beth. What he really looks like and what he made himself look like when he was raising her look totally different.” 

“He want you to say ‘yes’ to Michael too?” 

Dean shook his head. “No . . . said he wanted to test us to make sure we wouldn’t agree to be vessels no matter what we were up against.” 

The other Dean nodded while he thought about that and then said, “It doesn’t bother you?” 

No. He was an idiot in that last life. Can’t believe he fucked things up over that. That’s really when things started to go downhill. Wasn’t when she got her memories back at all . . . and now she was probably gonna think that he did have a problem with who her Dad was because of it, but he didn’t. He’d been a different person in that other life. “Not at all . . . He’s been saving our asses ever since the outbreak. I’m hoping he’s with Sam and Rogue right now if they’re not here.” 

The other Dean said, “Rogue’s your kid?” Dean nodded, so the other Dean grinned. “I know you didn’t come up with that name.” 

Dean exhaled a laugh and said, “Nope. Rogue picked her own name . . . I didn’t know it, but Beth was going into her room at night and giving her a list of comic book character names to see which ones she liked, and Rogue is the one Rogue smiled at every single time . . . By the time I found out about it, there was nothing I could do . . . tried holding out for a few months, but she didn’t like anything else.” 

\----------------------

They’d just gotten done fending off a pack of gorilla wolves. Dean was catching his breath, because those things were fucking huge, and strong . . . Beth said something about them being kind of like the ghoul-beserker hybrids, because it took a couple of them working together to bring each one down. He was getting ready to say that he thought it was more like with the kiddie ogre they killed, but stopped when he heard Sam’s voice in his head. “Dean?” 

It was clear as day, and a hell of a lot louder than anything Dean ever got out of Beth when he heard what she was thinking. In fact, he looked around, because he thought maybe Sam was standing a few feet away, but he wasn’t. “Sam?” 

That grabbed the other Dean’s attention straight away. “You heard that too?” 

Yeah, he did. “Dean? Are you where I think you are?” 

“Don’t know. Where do you think I am? If it’s Purgatory, then you’re not wrong.” 

He waited a few seconds, and then Sam said, “Yeah, that’s what I thought . . . uh, Beth can’t get you out of there?” 

The other Dean gave him a weird look. “He’s yours?” 

Dean shrugged and Sam said, “Wait. Can both of you hear me?” 

“Yeah. How are you doin’ this Sam?” 

He and the other Dean both waited in anticipation of the answer, and then it came. “I found a spell that lets you communicate with people on the other side . . . It’s a blood spell, Dean . . . meaning that I can only communicate with people that share the same blood as me . . . if he can hear too then . . . does that mean were related to them?” 

He didn’t know. Dean looked down at Beth for the answer on that one. “Hey, are me and the other me related? Sam used a blood spell to talk to realatives on the other side . . . The other me picking it up too.” 

Beth breathed out a disbelieving laugh. “You’re not related . . . He is you. The circumstances that lead up to you being born are exactly the same. You have the same parents. You have identical DNA . . . It’s just that he’s lived a different life and had different life experiences . . . You could say you’re identical twins separated at birth if it makes it easier to understand, but that’s not what you are. You’re the same person. Up until you branched off from his life or he branched off of yours, you lived the exact same life. If you asked him something from his childhood that only you know about, I bet you that he’ll know the answer.” 

He’d thought Beth being born was what made him branch off from this guy, so he said that, and Beth shook her head. “No, either you or your Dad meeting Rachel is what made you branch off from him. It didn’t happen because you met me . . . Dad didn’t do anything to make branches happen . . . just maybe some time loops.” 

Dean slowly went from looking at Beth to looking at the other Dean. _What should I ask him?_ “You ever get caught trying to take a five finger discount after you lost your food money in a game of poker?” The other Dean didn’t know where this was going, but nodded anyway, so Dean said, “What was the name of the guy who ran the boy’s home where you got sent?” 

“Sonny.” 

Yeah, that wasn’t hard. “You remember a girl named Robin?” The other Dean still wasn’t sure where this was going, but nodded again, so Dean said, “What’d you tell her you wanted to be instead of a hunter?” 

“Rock star . . . or a mechanic.” 

Okay. That was right, but it still wasn’t that hard. “You ever know a Thundercats girl?” 

That’d been a curve ball. He went from something that happened when he was 16 to something that happened when he was 6, so the other Dean wouldn’t have a chance to hide his immediate reaction before answering. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Yeah, you do . . . You looked for someone like her and then her at every new school you went to for the next 6 months. You forgot her name, but you never forgot her. The same way you never forgot the Mutant Ninja Turtles girl. And you’ve never talked about either one. Guessing your Sam never found out why he got a Barbie and cheerleading crap that one Christmas. You just told him you broke into a nice house up the block, and that was it.” 

The other Dean looked annoyed that he’d been caught out like that. “What does this have to do with your brother talking to both of us?” 

Dean grinned and nodded towards Beth. “Beth is the Thundercats girl and the Mutant Ninja Turtles girl . . . you and me were the same person until we were 16 at least . . . Do you remember Dad going on a werewolf hunt without you not long after you got sent to Sonny’s? The rest of the family died, but Dad saved one 15 year old girl and thought she was old enough to take care of herself, so he left her behind.” 

The other Dean was still trying to piece together what he’d meant about Beth and distractedly answered, “I don’t know what you’re talking about on that one.” 

“Well, then you and me were the same person until that happened, because that’s the first time I heard about Rachel, the other half of Beth’s soul.” 

“Uh, Dean . . . I don’t know how long I have until this spell runs out.” 

Dean looked around the woods and thought he saw movement off in the distance. “Yeah, me neither . . . What do you need, Sam?” 

The other Dean asked “What about my brother? Is he all right?” 

Sam was slow on responding, but finally said, “If by all right, you mean, is he a dick? Then yeah, he’s all right.” 

The other Dean grinned and said, “If he’s a dick, doesn’t that mean you’re a dick, since you’re the same person he is?” 

Sam was quick to jump on that one. “It’s been 7 months, and he’s done nothing to find him . . . He let Crowley have Kevin and Meg . . . He’s seeing some awful woman . . . They have a dog named Dog . . . That’s about it. I told him where his brother was, and he still hasn’t done anything about it. I’ve been here a couple of days and found this spell, so I could find my brother. You wanna know what he’s doing right now?” 

What the hell was wrong with everyone? At this rate, they were going to talk this Dean out of wanting to leave Purgatory, which would kind of solve their problem, but it was a dick thing to do. “Knock it off, Sam. You weren’t talking to me. You were talking to him. What do you want?” 

Sam sighed and said, “If God hasn’t gotten you out of there yet, then I think you guys have to get out of there by finding that portal, because I don’t think I can do it from here. I don’t know how long that’s going to take, so I was wondering what you want me to do about Kevin and Meg . . . I think Kevin might’ve gotten away from Crowley, but he’s off the grid and won’t be easy to find.“ 

The other Dean asked, “Are you looking after your brother’s kid?” Sam said he was, so the other Dean said, “Then stay wherever you are with her and get my brother do it. Tell him he owes Kevin that much.” 

Sam sighed again. “I’ll try, but if he won’t, then I’m gonna have to do it. Kevin’s a tough kid, but right now, he’s scared and needs help.” 

The other Dean looked at Dean and said, “You’re all right with him chasing after a prophet who has the King of Hell on his tail when he’s got your daughter?” 

Yeah, Sam knew what he was doing. “She’s been in situations a lot worse than this. Sam –“ 

“What if Crowley sees her with Sam and hears her call him uncle or something and takes her because he thinks she’s mine and can use her as leverage against Sam or me the next time he sees us?” 

Hadn’t thought of that. Beth added her two-cents. “She only calls him Sam, so it shouldn’t be a problem until we get back.” 

Looking at her, Dean said, “Yeah, but he has a point. We aren’t there to protect her, so Sam needs to have his attention on her, not tracking Kevin down,” before he asked Sam if he’d seen Gabriel yet. 

“Not yet.”

“Call him and see if he can look after her if you really think this Kevin thing needs to be done.”

“Okay, I’ll –“ The spell must’ve been out of minutes or something, because Sam’s voice got cut off. That was probably a good thing. It looked like they had more incoming, and the last thing Dean needed was his brother’s voice in his head.


	18. Self-Hatred

“You need my help already?” 

Sam turned to look at Gabriel and said, “Do you think you could look after Rogue for a while? I have to go find Kevin. The other Sam isn’t going to do it.” 

Gabriel took her from Sam and gave Sam a look that said he didn’t think that was necessarily true. “Have you even tried? How do you know that you doing everything for him won’t make things worse? You should make him go with you . . . knock him out and throw him in the trunk until he gets it . . . give him the push he needs to start moving again.” 

_That’s not a bad idea . . . Yeah, think I’ll do that._

Sam went to his weapons bag and picked up his taser on his way out the door. Going to the room where he thought the other Sam said he was going to be doing maintenance work, he didn’t even knock. He just walked in, went up to the other Sam, and tasered him before he could hear his annoying voice ask him what he was doing in there. Searching the other Sam’s pockets, he took his phone and his keys. Then he picked him, and throwing him over his shoulder was a struggle, but he managed it and went to the door. 

Maybe he should’ve waited to do this until tonight. Someone might notice him trying to take him to the car . . . It sure felt good to taser him though. The other Sam’s inaction and refusal to do anything for his brother had been making him angrier and angrier every minute he spent with him. He appraised the distance he had to go to get to the Impala. It wasn’t far. He looked like the guy over his shoulder. He could just tell anyone who saw what he was doing that he was this guy’s twin, and he was playing a prank on him. 

Sam got back into his motel room, and Gabriel said, “Do you even know where you’re going, or did you just taser him and throw him in the trunk? What are you going to do when that wears off?” 

Sam grabbed his bags, told Rogue he had to go to work, but that he’d be back in a couple of days, and said, “I’ll figure it out. It’ll get him moving no matter what he decides to do,” before he headed out the door and up to an Impala the other Sam definitely didn’t deserve.

He drove all day and all night and found somewhere to stay the next evening before he decided to chance opening the trunk. He hadn’t really known where to go. It hadn’t really mattered. He’d just had to get the other Sam away from that woman and maybe to feel what it was like to drive without anything, like the snow stopping him again. Maybe he was enjoying being able to drive without have to take a break to rest his right knee. God had heeled it. That meant deciding to go on this mission and the reason he had, to save the people from their camp from disappearing unexpectedly one day, had been the right reason to do it.

After getting a room for them, Sam got back in the driver’s seat, looked at the back seat and said loudly, “You ready to get out of there?” 

The other Sam shouted back, “Yeah . . . so I can kill you.” 

That was a good sign. It meant there was still something in the other Sam that resembled spirit. “You don’t have to kill me. I think I made my point, so when I let you out, you can do whatever you want, but if you leave and go back to that motel without looking for Kevin, don’t expect your brother to be okay with it . . . You let him down. You know it, and I know it . . . even he knows it. You can start trying to fix that before he gets out of Purgatory, or you can keep doing what you’re doing, but if you want things to be good between you and Dean when you see him again, you need to do this . . . And while you’re at it, you should start looking for a way to get him out of Purgatory . . . I don’t think there is a way. I think he has to find a way out on his own, but you should at least try. It’s what he’d do for you.” 

The other Sam sighed. “We made a deal.” 

Right. The deal where they’d let the other one go if one of them died? “That’s a bunch of crap, and you know it. Can you honestly tell me that you’re happy fixing air conditioning units in exchange for a place to live? Is that where you saw yourself at any point in your life, or did you have a breakdown thinking that Dean was gone and need someone or something to kick your ass into gear?” They’d been having the same conversation for the last two days. He guessed he’d find out now if any of it’d sunk in.

Getting out, Sam went around to the trunk and thought about holding his handgun on the other Sam to make sure he had enough time to get out of his reach, but decided against it. That wouldn’t give off the kind of impression he wanted to give. He’d meant what he said. This was meant to be a wake up call for the other Sam. If the other Sam wanted to hit snooze and keep on sleeping his way through life, he could, and Sam would pick up the slack until the other Sam got his act together. 

He opened the trunk and backed away in record time, but it didn’t look like he’d had to do that. The other Sam didn’t move a muscle. “You really talked to him?” 

Sam looked around the parking lot to see if anyone had noticed that he was talking to someone in the trunk of his car, but nobody was there. They were alone. “I talked to both of our brothers. Your brother told me to tell you to take care of Kevin, that you owed Kevin that much.” 

Sighing, the other Sam said, “All right, but after I find Kevin and make sure he’s somewhere safe, then I think I’m out . . . I’m done losing Dean and having him lose me. I have a life, or I’m trying to have a life.” 

That was fair . . . he guessed? “What are you going to do when her husband comes back?” 

The other Sam shook his head and climbed out of the trunk. “IF he comes back. I only have your word that he will, and in case you hadn’t noticed, you tasered me and drove me half way across the country, so I’m a little low on trust with you right now.” 

“You believed me when I told you that the first day. It’s why you’re spending as much time with her as you can while there’s time left to spend it. I still don’t understand it, man. I mean is it the fact you’ve both lost someone or thought you lost someone that is keeping you with her, or what? She’s abrasive, and she drinks too much.” 

“You wouldn’t understand.” 

Sam unlocked the door to their motel room and said, “Try me.” 

“When I’m with her, I feel like I have a future, a life. I think we could be happy. I don’t have that nervous tension in the pit of my stomach that I used to have at Stanford, the one that was always pushing me forward to get the best grades and the highest test scores, so I could be accepted by Jess or the professors or people in my classes. I don’t feel like I have to prove that I’m somebody or worth something by getting into law school with Amelia. I just am who I am, and that’s enough for her. And she’s only abrasive and drinks too much, because she was heartbroken over her husband dying. Some people react to loss that way, but she’s softened a lot, since I met her.” 

Sam couldn’t imagine what that meant she was like before . . . she mistook him for the other Sam a few days ago. She was short with him, and it put him off on her straight away. “Jess never expected you to be who you weren’t. She was just happy when you were able to achieve what you wanted achieve, because you said it’s what you wanted . . . don’t compare her to Amelia. And I bet you haven’t told Amelia who you really are any better than you told Jess. What does that really say about your relationship with her and how she accepts you for who you are? You shouldn’t have to lie to make it work with somebody. If you really want to find someone who understands you and the life you’ve lived, somebody who can survive in a life that will always pull you back into it, find a hunter. It seems to have worked for my brother.” 

The other Sam claimed the bed Sam was going to take and said, “Yeah? How’s that philosophy worked out for you so far?” 

“Well, there was Jess, and then I was with Jo until I killed her, and now I’m pretty sure, I shouldn’t go near another woman with a 10-foot pole.” 

The other Sam quickly sat up. “Jo, as in Jo Harvelle? You were with her?” Sam nodded, and the other Sam laughed. “I always thought she had a thing for Dean.” 

She might have when she was younger, but she didn’t seem to have any problems being with Sam when they were together. “He was with Beth, and Jo and I were friends first, and then things kind of took off from that.” 

The other Sam laughed a weaker laugh in disbelief. “But she died too even though she was a hunter. Was it a hellhound when Lucifer bound the Horseman of Death?” 

Owning up to things and accepting responsibility for them, that was part of the path of redemption, right? Sam ran his hand through his hair and shook his head. “No, when I say that I killed her, I mean, I pointed the gun at her head when she was expecting me to save her from Lucifer and pulled the trigger instead of letting him take her, because I didn’t want him to use her to get me to agree to be his vessel. But other than that, it happened in Carthage during the Death binding ritual, the same way it did here.” 

The other Sam blinked a couple of times in confusion and then said, “Wait! So, let me get this right . . . you didn’t just get her killed on a hunt. You’re the one who pulled the trigger, and it’s so you wouldn’t have to be Lucifer’s vessel?” 

Yeah, pretty much. Sam nodded, and the disgust on his own face looking back at him was annoying. Is that the bitch face, Dean and Beth were always going on about? “You are me, so you would’ve done the exact same thing I did given all the same circumstances.” 

The other Sam stood up and started pacing. “You’re giving me a hard time for not looking for Dean when I thought he was dead, and you’re a murderer?” 

The other Sam didn’t know. He hadn’t been there. He wasn’t any better than him. “Yeah, and that was probably the least bad thing out of along list of bad things I’ve done. I released the Croatoan virus, and while the rest of the world was dying or being turned, I moved into Las Vegas with my demons and took it over by telling them I’d get rid of their Croat problem for them . . . I had them put walls up around the city under the pretense of keeping them safe, and then I had my other demons possess them, or imprison them, and when the Alphas got there, I had them start turning the rest into monsters. I sent my demons out to look for more people and did the same thing to anyone they found, except for the kids. I needed monsters on my side if I was going to compete with the number of demons Crowley had, and he couldn’t control monsters, so I made alliances with monsters by giving them 5 kids a week. They were starving because of the Croat outbreak, so they didn’t have a choice really. What else did I do? I –“ 

The other Sam rounded on him. “Do you hear yourself? You almost sound proud of it!” 

Sam shook his head. “I’m not proud of it. But I find it interesting that you believed me so easily. You must know that deep down you have it in you to do the same thing. How could you not? You’ve felt the same darkness I have your whole life. You ignored it and fought against it the same way I did . . . until I stopped and gave into it. But I’m trying to do the right thing now . . . I’m trying to raise the kids at our camp that my brother saved, so they can have a future after I took it from them. I’m trying to stop something even worse from happening to my universe and your universe and all the other universes out there.” 

The other Sam breathed out a laugh and said, “So, you want what? A gold star for doing the right thing now?” 

The absolute last thing Sam was looking for was redemption. He really just wanted to do the right thing. “No. I want to do it, because it’s the right thing to do . . . And because I’m the only one who can. I know what I’m capable of doing. I know when I’m beyond saving. I know that I’m the reason that the Darkness might even be a problem because I’m the one who releases it . . . Honestly, if we’re all the same person, just with different life experiences, then I think maybe there’s a part of me that is looking forward to punishing myself the way I should’ve been punished for all the bad things I’ve done, so I’m the only person who can put an end to it when we run out of other options, because the rest of my family will never be able to do that as long as the person who threatens to end the universe looks like me. I mean look at me. After all the things I’ve done, I’m still here. What does that tell you about what they’re willing to do when I am too great of a threat to be allowed to live?” 

He’d had some time to think about it, and that was how he could contribute on this mission. Forget about bringing any versions of him along with them to other timelines. That’d just be like spreading the cancer, and the last thing he wanted were a bunch of Sam Winchesters running around in their universe at the end of the mission who all had it in them to become what he had. No, he needed to eradicate the Sam Winchester problem . . . if talking to them and showing them what they were doing wrong made no difference to them and they were going to continue to make the wrong choices, while thinking they were right, then it was the only thing that could be done with them, or at least that’s what he thought.


	19. Getting Out of Here

I put my arm out to soften the blow of the tree I was about to fly into and heard a crunch when I hit. Bouncing off, I still managed to turn my body enough to land in a crouch on the ground out of habit more than anything, because I hadn’t been thinking about the landing. _Fuck! I think I broke . . . something._ I didn’t know what. The whole thing was numb. That wasn’t going to stop these monsters though. 

I rolled out of the way as a werewolf tried to take my head with one of those axe things everyone seemed to have here. Swing and a miss, but he was up for another go at it. Ending my roll on my back, I transferred my angel blade to my left hand and brought it up to block the handle of the axe and keep him from braining me before I swiped his legs out from under him, rolled onto my knees and brought my blade down through his neck . . . primarily with my left hand even though I tried to put some force behind it with my right. 

“Goddamnit!” _A partial decapitation? Are you fucking kidding me?_ I didn’t have time to think about the fact that my arm didn’t feel numb anymore. I had something coming up fast on the left side of my back, so I dropped my angel blade to the ground, reached up with both hands, grabbed ahold of the new monster’s axe handle, and flipped whatever the fuck kind of monster it was over my head by using its momentum against it. Keeping the axe, I twirled it high above my head and brought it down through the partially severed neck at me knees before using the axe to get to my feet and going over to finish the monster off whose axe I now had . . . but the onslaught wasn’t over yet. I was starting to get pissed off, and I couldn’t afford to get pissed off. I had to keep a clear head if I wanted to make it out of here. _Shut it all down now!_

Turning, I swung the axe to take the head off of whatever new things was sprinting towards my back, followed through on the swing and used the momentum to bring the axe up over my head and down into the head of the monster next to the one I’d just decapitated. It was buried in the head of that monster too deep for me to waste time trying to pull it back out, so I did a somersault roll towards my angel blade, picked it up in my right hand, and thrust up through the chin of another monster reaching down for me. The best thing about my angel blade was that it didn’t get stuck in things I stabbed. Withdrawing it, I twirled the blade as I stood to get it into a better stance and engaged the next monster. 

_Block left, right, left, spin, elbow to the stomach, turn with a puncture to the side, turn to get behind it, kick the knees out, swing the blade to take the head, follow through on the swing, bring it up to block the back of your head from the next one, kick back into it’s stomach to get it away from you, and take the head off of the one to your left. Now face the one behind you._

I went through about 5 or 6 more, and then with a final three quick swipes across the last giant monster’s torso to make it only think about the pain from those cuts, I dropped to the ground to cut it’s left foot off, kicked out its right knee to make it fall, and then rolled onto my knees to bring my angel blade down through its neck. After that, it looked like I was in the clear, so I relaxed and looked around to see how everyone else was doing. 

_Why are they standing around watching me?_ Dean was the first to move, followed quickly by Cas, and they did it, so they could stand in front of me. Getting to my feet, I asked, “What’s going on?” 

Dean quickly said, “Did you just tap into your soul? Here? Where everyone is already on edge?” 

“I had to . . . I couldn’t afford to lose my cool, and I was starting to get mad.” 

I felt something behind me, so I dropped to the ground, and brought my angel blade up to block the back of my head from an axe, but that’s not what I blocked. I knew that sound and feel. _Another angel blade?_ I looked behind me to see who else down here had one and was a little surprised. “Cas?” The next thing I knew he was bending down to touch me, and I thought that was going to be lights out, but instead I was just up standing in front of the other Dean and Benny a split second later.

“I told you to go get her, not kill her, Cas!” 

Angel Cas said, “I knew that I wouldn’t, and I didn’t,” and I didn’t particularly like his answer, because he could have. 

While still clearly annoyed, Purgatory Dean looked at me. “What the fuck was that?” 

“What the fuck was what?” 

“Was that an angel thing?” 

“No. It was a human thing. Only humans have souls, so only a human can tap into the power of their soul.” 

He looked at his Cas, and his Cas said, “It is possible. Some monks have been known to do it, but I have never heard of anyone doing it in the heat of battle or without extensive training.” 

_How extensive?_ “I don’t have any formal training in soul tapping.” 

Purgatory Dean stook a step towards me, and I took a step back right into a tree before he said, “Cas said he doesn’t know what you’re thinking.” 

_No, I guess he doesn’t._ “Wow . . . so, he actually admitted that he knows what you’re thinking? I thought that was kind of an unspoken thing you guys didn’t talk about.” 

Purgatory Dean ignored what I’d said. “Do you think this is funny?” 

I laughed uncomfortably, and my Dean said, “She doesn’t respond well to being yelled at . . . you won’t get anything out of her that way.” 

Looking over at my Dean, Purgatory Dean said, “After what she just did, I think she can handle someone yelling at her,” and my Dean shook his head.

“Yeah, but not if it's you . . . if you want answers, take it down a few notches and give her some space before she starts quoting movies back at you and really pisses you off. I get it . . . You’ve never seen someone do that before . . . mostly, you think it was hot, but it freaks you out a little too, cause you don’t know how she did it, or if it means she’s something else, but trust me, she’s relatively normal considering what she’s been through . . . it’s a little easier for her to do what she just did than it would be for anybody else because of how she’s put together. That’s all it is.” 

Purgatory Dean looked back at me and took a step back before trying again. “What’s he mean by how you’re put together?” 

“I’m shattered? Broken? I can cut myself off entirely from my emotions. It’s something I guess I started doing to survive being in Heaven, and being able to access the power of my soul is a byproduct of that. I didn’t know that up there. The first few times it happened on Earth, it was after the Croat outbreak. I got really upset about some of the things I was seeing, not with Croats, but with human monsters that could do what they wanted now that there weren’t any cops or anyone else to hold them accountable for literally ripping people weaker than them apart for fun. Being that angry flipped a switch that shut down all my emotions, and then everything got slower, and I didn’t question the things I had to do, because they had to be done, and they were the right things to do . . . Then one time, the Alpha Changeling came for me and Rogue, and I was getting my ass kicked and made myself do it to save Rogue. Ever since then I’ve been able to do it when I want . . . it takes a lot out of me emotionally and maybe physically after I do it, and it possibly makes another problem I have with people attacking me worse, so I don’t do it very often unless I have to do it.” 

The Cas in the trench coat asked, “Why would people attack you?” 

“It’s the price of doing business of God.” 

The Cas in the trench coat wanted to know if that was why he didn’t know what I was thinking, so my Cas tried to help by leading me in the right direction. “Do you remember how you communicated to your Dad and Michael that the Army from the Abyss was on it’s way to the Chapel amidst all of the fighting?” 

Yeah, I focused on what I’d seen and kind of balled it up and sent it to them through a single touch. My thinking was that a picture is worth a thousand words and could convey the problem much faster than me telling them would. I’d done the same thing with the Cas in the last universe when he got to Cold Oak. 

Cas looked at angel-Cas and said, “Do that for him, so he can see why you learned that particular skill.” 

My Dean immediately told me not to do it before telling Cas that wasn’t anybody else’s business. My Cas said that trench coat Cas should know why he shouldn’t feel bad about killing off most of the angels in Heaven. Purgatory Dean looked at me and wanted to know what they were talking about. My Dean’s ears perked up at that. “Would you want anyone seeing what Alistair did to you on the rack? That’s what he wants her to do. Picture all the times she was tortured in Heaven and show them to your Cas.” 

Well, I think I’d had just about enough of this little discussion. That’s roughly when I was ‘saved by the Sam,’ from the rest of the argument. “Uh, testing, testing . . . I’m looking for a Beth Foley?” 

_Well, that’s weird._ “Sam from this universe, I presume?” 

That caught the Dean in front of me’s attention while my Dean and Cas continued arguing. “Why is he talking to you?” 

“Sam, your brother wants to know why you’re talking to me instead of him.”

Silence, and just as I was shrugging that I didn’t know to Purgatory Dean, Sam said, “The way the spell works, you say the name of the person you want to contact, otherwise the entire family line can hear you.” 

Looking at Purgatory Dean, I translated, “He just wants to talk to me, I guess.” 

He looked confused, and I didn’t have any answers for him, but I did have a question for the Sam on the line. “This is the same blood spell our Sam used, correct?” 

Little hesitation, and then, “Yeah, that’s not important. Um, your Sam –“ 

“What do you mean that’s not important? Of course it’s important. There’s only one person who has my blood, and it isn’t my Dad, because he’s a big ball of energy crammed into a meat suit that may or may not be the one he was wearing when I was created. Did you cut my daughter, Sam?” 

A little more silence, and then, “Uhhh . . . it was just a drop or two. Maybe this was a bad idea. I just thought you should know that your Sam is losing it, and he said something about you being the only one who was able to stop him in your universe.” 

“You’re damn right it was a bad idea . . . but you’ve got me until your time runs out, so hear this, Sam Winchester, I’m going to make you lose twice as much blood as you made her lose to make this call.” 

_Chuck, you left my daughter with a couple of lunatics . . . You want us to get out of here through the portal, and that’s okay with me, but a lift to the portal would be much appreciated by everyone here. I think our team building exercise has served its purpose. I’ll make sure we keep it up when we get out of here._

The next thing I knew we were all standing about 50 meters down and maybe a football field away from a big blue light in the side of a hill. It looked like a portal, so that’s where I headed. One of the Dean’s asked what the hell was happening. I had to look at his coat to know who he was, because my Dean’s coat was olive, and this one’s was sort of a brownish color. “Your brother is worried about my Sam. For some reason he thinks that my Sam is losing it. I think your brother is the one who has lost it. He cut my daughter to use the blood spell and contact me, because he said that my Sam said I was the only one who was able to stop him in our universe . . . Where’s my Dad? He’s supposed to be watching her. My guess is your brother banished him, because there’s no way my Dad would let anyone hurt Rogue, even if it was just a pin prick to get a couple of drops of blood . . . Where’s my Sam? He might be willing to erase Rogue from being born, but he’d never hurt her or let anyone else hurt her . . . Purgatory has been fun and all, but I need to get back to my daughter.” 

I heard the Sam in my head say, “It isn’t like that at all . . . Your Sam tasered me and threw me in a trunk, and then when we got where we were going, he said he was going to kill all of the other Sam Winchesters if we didn’t listen to reason, because he knows that’s the only way to stop us. That was two months ago, and after we found Kevin, he took off with him to hide him somewhere I wouldn’t think to look for him, because he thinks I’m too inept to do the job myself, but he’s dangerous. I don’t think –“ 

“Yeah? Sounds to me like he’s been setting a fire under your ass to make you actually do something worthwhile, and instead of going after him, you went to find my daughter, so you could use her to tattle on him. Where’s my Dad? Why are you the one watching my daughter? You might look like her uncle, but you’re not her uncle, and if you are messing with her head to make her think you are while you hurt her, I will -” 

Purgatory Dean said, “Let me talk to him.” 

_How am I supposed to do that? His brother is in my head. I can’t exactly hand that over . . . maybe just relay the message, dope._ “Your brother wants to talk to you, Sam?” 

Sam sighed and said okay, and Purgatory Dean said, “Ask if he’s doing this because he’s worried about the other Sam or if it’s because he heard about your God thing and wanted you to use it to get me home faster.” 

I asked Sam, and Sam said, “What? No. I already told you –“ 

Looking at Purgatory Dean, I said, “He’s denying it pretty strenuously. So, that’s a yes to the second one.” 

He smiled briefly. “Tell him I’m about to get out, and I want him to meet me at Rufus’s cabin.” I said that, and Sam said okay, and I was in the middle of asking what about Rogue when our call got cut off. I was pretty annoyed by that, because I didn’t want that Sam watching her. Purgatory Dean stopped me from going to the portal again and said, “I know how to talk to him. Let me handle it.” 

My Dean had been watching the whole interaction and finally decided to say something. “You’d better.” 

“I will. She doesn’t have to –“ 

My Dean shook his head and said, “It’s not Beth you have to worry about. There are just some lines you don’t cross, and once Sam starts crossing ‘em, he doesn’t look back. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a threat to every one of us, and he’s your brother, not mine,” before he walked around Purgatory Dean and headed towards the portal. 


	20. Fresh Perspective

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is from the Purgatory Dean point of view.

Dean opened the motel room door, and it wasn’t Sam who came to greet him. It was a little girl. She ran up to him, like she was going to give him a hug and then stopped short a few feet away. _This is their kid?_ She was tiny. He could see the gauze wrapped around her left hand and looked at his brother. There was finding a way to get him out of Purgatory faster, and then there was cutting up toddlers. 

His attention was drawn back to the little girl when she demanded, “Dad . . . silv–er!” He didn’t know what that meant, but her Dad did and pulled the silver amulet out from under his collar. _Did she seriously just tell us to do a shifter test?_ As soon as she saw the amulet, the little girl ran up to the guy standing next to him, so she could be picked up. “Have a lot of shifters in your universe?” 

The other Dean smiled and tried to calm his daughter down when she burst into tears because she was so happy to see him. “Better safe than sorry, but it comes in handy with both of us being here now. I’m gonna take her and her Mom outside . . . let you have some time with your brother. Don’t forget to tell him about Benny and find out what the hell happened to Gabriel.” 

Right. Dean wasn’t quite sure what to do here. He’d come back with an army of people that he liked . . . a lot. He understood them. Maybe not what they were saying half the time, but how they worked. The human Cas even stayed behind to be the last one out of Purgatory, so he could kick the angel Cas’s ass and make him go through that portal whether he wanted to go through it or not, and that Cas didn’t even like Dean’s Cas. 

To be honest, they felt like family even though he was still getting to know them, and Sam may have been trying to help by getting them to put a move on getting Dean out of Purgatory faster than they were already trying to do, but he’d gone about it in the wrong way. Didn’t mean that there wasn’t a part of Dean that was grateful that Sam would do whatever it took to get him out of Purgatory, but hurting a baby to do it was crossing the line. That was black magic kind of shit, and they might use spells sometimes for things they were hunting, but they didn’t do that. “You wanna tell me what happened?” 

“He’s dangerous, Dean. You don’t know what he’s done. He –“ 

“Killed off almost the entire planet in their universe? I know. But you kidnapped their daughter and used her in a spell. Why would you do that?” 

Sam got up and started pacing. “I didn’t know what else to do. He mentioned his brother’s girlfriend or whatever was the one who stopped him, and I thought maybe she should know he was slipping.” 

_Is he slipping?_ “Did he hurt you?” 

Sam stopped. “He tasered me, threw me in the back of the Impala, and drove for 2 days before he let me out.” 

“Why’d he do that?” Sam said he didn’t know, and Dean said, “Come on, Sam. He is you. You’ve gotta have some idea why he did it.” Sam started bitching about how he was nothing like the other Sam, and Dean wasn’t in the mood. “All right. Fine. He isn’t you. But I’m not buying that he just opened the trunk, and that was it. What’d he say?” 

Sam’s shoulders dropped. “He said if I left without helping him find Kevin, not to expect you and me to be okay when you got back. He said I let you and Kevin both down, and I could start fixing it before you got out of Purgatory by finding Kevin . . . or keep doing nothing. The choice was mine. I told him I’d help find Kevin and get him somewhere safe, and then I was out. And then he –“

“Whoa. Wait. Out? What does that mean?” 

“It means I’m done with hunting. I’m done losing you. I’m done having you lose me. I have a life with Amelia now, or I will until her husband comes back, but I was thinking that maybe we – “ 

Dean coughed out a laugh in disbelief. “What do you mean when her husband comes back?” 

Sam glanced at him and then looked away before saying, “The other Sam said her husband’s not really dead the way they thought. He’s just MIA, and he’ll be back in a few months.” 

“Well, did you tell her that?” 

Giving him a defiant look, Sam replied, “What am I supposed to say? A time traveler who looks like me said her husband isn’t really dead? No. Mostly, I just want to spend as much time with her as I can before he comes back, but now the other Sam’s disappeared with Kevin, and –“ 

“That’s why you did what you did? You want them to find the other Sam and Kevin, so you can go back and be with a married woman before she finds out her dead husband isn’t really dead?” 

“What? No, that’s not –“

“Save it.” Turning towards the door, Dean added, “Go back to your married woman. I’m gonna go with them to see if we can find his brother. Wish I knew where my brother was,” before he walked out the door and slammed it behind him. He was going to give Sam 10 minutes to get his priorities right, and then he was going to leave without him.

That night, they were in a motel room on their way to find evil Sam. Dean was having a hard time turning being in Purgatory off now that he’d gotten out. He was still on edge. Maybe a shower would help. Couldn’t remember the last time he had one of those. When he came out of the bathroom, he heard his brother say, “That’s the book you’re reading to her?” 

Dean glanced over at the other Dean and Rogue. What book was it? _All My Friends Are Dead?_ Every time the Rogue's Dad got to the word, ‘dead,’ he’d pause, and Rogue would say it. She was a pretty smart little kid. When they turned the page, Rogue's Dad looked at Sam and said, “Yeah, it’s our book. I’ve been reading it to her everyday that I’m around since she was 3 months old.” 

Sam shook his head in disappointment. “Do you really think that’s appropriate?” 

“Think it’s more appropriate than cutting her hand for a spell and giving her nothing but baby food for infants for two weeks, because you don’t know what you’re doing and banished her grandfather who actually knows how to take care of her.” 

Sam opened his mouth to respond, and Dean cut him off, “Leave it Sam. You don’t know him. Just because he looks like me doesn’t mean you get to give him a hard time about every little thing he does with her . . . but it’s good to know that you’d be a pain in my ass if I ever had one.” 

That made Sam grin. “You thinking of having one of your own?” 

If he were going to have one, he’d want one like this kid. She was smart and cute and apparently had a hell of a right hook. “Absolutely not.” 

Picking up one of his jackets, Dean headed outside to see if he could find somewhere nearby to get some food or a drink or something to get him out of there. Him and Sam were bunking down together. Rogue's Dad was bunking down with the two Cas’s, but he was sick of hearing them argue, so he’d brought Rogue with him into Dean and Sam’s room. Beth had her own room, but all three rooms were adjacent to one another, and the doors were open between them, so it was like they were all living on top of each other.

He noticed that the streetlight was out near his baby and stopped. It hadn’t been out when he parked her there. He always made sure she was in a well-lit area. Walking over to move her, he stopped again when he saw someone lying on the trunk. “Hey, what the hell?” 

Beth’s head popped up, and then she sighed and put her head back down, so she could go back to looking at the stars. “Sorry, I’m guessing you’re the other Dean, and this is your car. I’m tired of everything . . . just wanted some time to myself.” 

_And to get drunk and smoke apparently._ “You shoot out the light?” He noticed the glass on the ground around the light pole now that he was closer. 

“Yep . . . it was giving off too much light pollution. I couldn’t see the stars.” 

He laughed when he looked up. It was cloudy. “Can you see ‘em any better now?” 

She shook her head. “Nope, if I shot out anymore, it’d make me a jerk . . . maybe even shooting out one does . . . guess people have to pay to have things like that fixed now that there are people again.” 

He looked to see if she was getting ash on his car, and it looked like she had her hand dangling over the other side of the car to keep that from happening, so he climbed up next to her. It was actually kind of a shame there weren’t any stars out. There weren’t any stars in Purgatory. Not that you’d actually have time to look at them when you spent all night up in a tree trying not to fall out or hidden inside a log holding your breath, so you didn’t give away your location . . . and it wasn’t so you could sleep. Sleep wasn’t an option in Purgatory anymore than it was an option in Hell. You just couldn’t do it. But that didn’t mean that you could stay on the move all night. Night is when everything in Purgatory came out to play. Most of the things that came out at night were more dangerous than what was out during the day, and they could all see a hell of a lot better than a human in the dark. 

“So, you’re the Thundercats girl? Is that why your Dad gave Rogue Thundercats shoes?” 

She rolled her head to look at him. “How’d you know he got them for her?” 

Taking the bottle of vodka she offered him, Dean said, “They’re vintage now. Guessing things like that are harder to find in good condition in your universe, so I asked the human Cas where she got ‘em, and he said Gabriel went back in time to get them for her.” 

Looking back up to the sky, Beth mumbled, “Checking up on our story now that we’re out of Purgatory?” Maybe. He didn’t say anything, and she smiled. “Yeah, I guess I am the Thundercats girl.” 

“What’d we have for lunch that day?” 

Her forehead crinkled while she thought about it. “Uh, I’m not sure . . . I remember you going into the school to get my lunchbox, because you said you were the expert, and I’d get caught. And I remember my lunchbox had gremlins on it, and you told me they were stupid, because they weren’t real. I told you that I knew that, because all monsters weren’t real . . . but I have no idea what was in the lunchbox . . . except maybe there was a fruit rollup, and you were all over that, but you wouldn’t give up my half for half the apple, so we argued about it, and then I threw the apple, because I got annoyed . . . wait . . . BLT extra mayo.” 

He didn’t say anything and went back to looking up at the clouds while he took another swig of the vodka and handed the bottle back to her, but his heart started racing for some reason. Maybe 5 minutes later he’d gotten his heart rate back under control and cleared his throat before saying, “What’d you give me for –“ 

“Chocolate chip cookies my Dad made.” 

Quickly revising his question, Dean asked, “What’d you offer to give my brother?” 

She looked confused. “You mean when I said that I asked for a remote control car and some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and you said the Turtles might be more your brother’s kind of thing . . . depending on which ones they were?” _Yeah, that._ His heart started pounding in his chest again, and she said, “It has to be hard to know that you were the Dean I know until you were older. And I know Dean told you about it in Purgatory, but the details probably make it seem more real . . . I’m sorry. My Dad was just trying to do something nice for me by letting me meet you. I know Dean thinks it was all the times we should’ve met, but the more I understand about the way time works, the less I think that. I think my Dad broke some serious rules doing what he did . . . Think maybe that’s why God keeps giving him a hard time about breaking rules . . . Think he breaks them all the time . . . If it helps, you and the Dean I know are equally important, otherwise you wouldn’t exist. Neither would this universe or any of the people in it. Everyone you’ve saved is as important as the ones we’ve saved . . . and lost.” 

There she went talking about stuff he didn’t understand, but whatever she said must’ve made sense to the part of him that was making his heart race, because it started slowing down on its own. He watched her light another cigarette and said, “Why would he make sure you met me when we were kids?” 

“He must’ve found other timelines where we did and decided that he'd make sure it happened for me, not just once or twice, but all of the times that I could have met you.” 

Yeah, he got that, but . . . “Why me?” 

She drank some of her vodka and handed it back. “Couple of reasons . . . I’m guessing you know about the prophecy with you being the first seal and the only one to stop the Apocalypse?” He hadn’t heard that one in a long time now, but yeah, he knew the one she was talking about, so he nodded, and she said, “Well, that’s 1 out of a series of 10 in our universe. Some of them are just about you. Some are just about me. Some of them are about both of us. None of them used your name . . . They just called you the Righteous Man, and they called me the North Star . . . and I knew that meant me, because North Star was all the angels used to call me when I was little . . . When I found the first prophecy, I thought that maybe there was somebody else out there like me, who’d want me, because I knew I didn’t belong where I was, and if I didn’t belong with him, then how were we supposed to do all these big things together? I didn’t really understand how family works; that you have to be born into it or work at building up trust if you aren’t. I thought I’d show up, and I’d be accepted . . . Anyway, that’s what got me through being in Heaven . . . trying to find him, whether he was up there or down here or wherever. Dad knew that and found you for me, while he was giving me a second more normal childhood, even though I didn’t remember being in Heaven at the time.” 

That was pretty heavy, and he didn’t know what to say to it, so he asked her what the second reason was. Beth laughed. “We’re soul mates . . . It’s why we were written about together in my timeline . . . and yeah, as lame as it sounds, it’s a real thing . . . I think what my Dad did is take me to the main trunk of your tree where his brothers were probably watching you, but where Raphael wasn’t looking for me, because he didn’t know who I was on the main trunk.” 

That didn’t make any sense. “How old are you?” 

“I don’t know anymore. I’m a year younger than you, but I’ve had my age changed and history rewritten so many times that it’s hard to keep up.” 

Dean sat up to look at her. “So, you’re a year younger than me . . . what difference does that make to that tree you keep talking about?” 

She looked a little confused again and took the vodka bottle back from him. “I guess the best way to think of it is that I’m from my own tree in that forest I was telling you about. It’s a very dense forest, and my tree grows alongside your tree, except it’s pretty small, because I’m something of an anomaly.” 

He watched her chug an impressive amount of booze and said, “So, how is it that your tree even met up with our tree?” 

Beth, looking a little glassy-eyed, answered, “Because some of the branches intersect with other trees in the forest. Some of my branches grew out and away from your tree into timelines where Raphael never knew about me, and where you and I never met, or they grew up alongside your tree and eventually a branch from your tree met one of my branches, and they started growing together. Those are the times we met and stayed together, and one of those intersecting branches happened when God intentionally put the 10 prophecies and tablets into play, and that’s the branch I’m from. It’s a very well hidden branch in the grand scheme of the whole forest.” 

He just wanted to make sure he had this right. “So, what your saying is that you think your Dad took you from your tree and put you in our tree twice, because nobody was looking for you there, and that’s why I met you when we were kids?” He laughed a little because she gave him a goofy grin and seemed proud of herself for explaining it to him well enough for him to understand it. “You sure you should be out here getting shit faced if you have to take care of Rogue?” 

Not that he was one to talk, but there was a reason he didn’t have any kids, and he knew what it was like to grow up with a parent that drank too much. She hadn’t really seemed like the type to get smashed in front of her kid from what he’d seen so far. She shook her head and grabbed another cigarette. “Her Dad has her tonight.” 

Right. He still didn’t know what was going on there. “So, you’re together, or . . . “ 

Beth shrugged. “I don’t know. We were good, and then he made the deal with God to go into the last timeline and brought me with him without me knowing about it. We were together for 11 years there before anything started going wrong. That’s when my Dad told him I was half-angel. It never bothered him in our life, but it did in that life when he couldn’t remember our life, and then things were okay again for awhile until I got my memories of our real life back, and then he got sent to Hell, and I was the one who went in and got him off the rack, and he didn’t like that I saw him like that, so after we got him out of Hell, he wanted some time to figure things out. Basically, that meant that we stayed together, but went our separate ways on the road, and then he broke things off completely again, so I didn’t see him again for 7 months, and then we went to our Apocalyptic-life, and he still didn’t remember that life, but he asked me to go out with him . . . and I thought maybe it was because he’d just killed the Alpha Vamp and was on a high from that, so I told him to wait until we got back to our camp and had a chance to see how things were there, and then it never came up again. Then we ended up in Purgatory, and he was him again, and here we are.” 

“So, you were together for 11 years?” She shook her head and said, “More like 12 and a bit, and the whole time, we had our minds wiped of the Apocalyptic-life, so it was like being reincarnated. We didn’t even remember Rogue or anything.” 

How were they all not more fucked up? “How long were you together before that happened?” She thought about it and said, “About 3 years, but we were together without really saying it for 2 years before that, so 5 I guess.” 

Whatever that meant . . . so that was like 17 years? But they hadn’t been together for a year . . . over a year in their minds? “Why would he do that? Take you off to another timeline?” 

She sighed and said, “To prepare for this mission we’re on now . . . maybe to get rid of the head Leviathan, so none of us had to go to Purgatory . . . think God found a way to still send us there . . . and I think part of him did it to see what it would’ve been like to live with me from the time we were 16.” 

“Things were really good before that? Guessing the world had already gone to hell before that.”

“Yeah . . . took a long time to get there, but they were . . . finally. We’d just done a heist in Fort Knox, and –“

Dean laughed. “A heist? There much point to it if you can't spend it on anything?”

Beth nodded. “Money isn’t the reason to do a heist . . . It’s for the challenge and bragging rights.”

“There much of a challenge if there’s nobody there to guard it?”

“Yeah . . . Monsters had about 2000 people in the vaults that they were either keeping as food or in preparation for their war with the Leviathan . . . like people they could turn to add to their numbers on the front lines, because the Leviathan camp was just outside Atlanta . . . Eve’s army was on the Northwest Coast, and the Alpha Vamp’s army was on the Northeast Coast . . . anyway, Dean and I went in and broke them out, and Dad and Rufus waited outside the back door . . . we left the prisoners with them, and then went back in to get more . . . 10 at a time.” 

“Any of that true?”

She gave him that slow nod, and looked him in the eye the way she had when he met her, and he already knew she was going to say, “All of it,” before she did. Whether it was or not, she really believed it was. The way she and her Dean fought in Purgatory . . . even the way their Cas, who was human, fought in Purgatory . . . they’d definitely seen some hardcore action in the past. Her Dean had backed everything she said too . . . without hearing what she’d said. 

“You really fight in a civil war in Heaven?”

“Yeah . . . only reason I didn’t die is because reapers couldn’t get past the daevas and Dean had time to heal me.”

“Heal you?”

“Yeah . . . supercharged soul mate benefits, I guess . . . don’t know if they work anymore, because we’ve been on the outs, and normal soul mates can’t do it . . . not even sure why it happens, but . . . yeah, he healed me.” He didn’t know what he thought about that. Sounded messed up and like a freaky kind of thing he wouldn’t want.

“You ever died?”

“Yeah . . . I know where spirits go when we salt and burn their bones . . . Death has a lock up . . . Dean died with me . . . made sure he died while his consciousness was in my soul . . . and he made a deal with Death to bring me back.”

Still making deals. “It work?”

“I’m here, aren’t I? All we had to do was get rid of the death tablet, give him back his ring, and . . . Dean had 24 hours to find me that felt like 24 minutes . . . in exchange, I got to come back, and Death said I wouldn’t die until I had a complete soul, because he didn’t want to see me again . . . I have a whole soul now. Deal complete.”

Dean briefly laughed. “Why didn’t Death want to see you again?”

Smiling, Beth answered, “He said I cheated, because I broke out of my cell and found Dean . . . I started to say it wasn’t my fault the locks on the cells were easy to get around, and he didn’t want me telling everyone else there how to do it.”

“They’re in cells?”

Beth nodded, but said, “Yeah . . . but they’re not bad. They have everything you ever enjoyed in life in them, and you don’t have to live in fake loops of good memories from when you were alive, like in Heaven . . . think it beats Heaven by a lot . . . even better if you get locked up next to someone you know.”

Yeah, Heaven did suck the last time he was there. “Hey, you wanna get out of here for a while?” 

The randomness of his question threw her. “What’d you have in mind?” 

“Your choice.” He didn’t really care, and she was the one who had a night off. 

“Can we go see a movie? I haven’t seen one in a cinema for a few years.” 

Yeah, they could do that. Should just about make a late show. He offered her a hand up and said, “You’re not gonna make us watch a chick flick are ya?” 

“Well, we got you out of Purgatory 3 months early, so I’m kind of hoping Abraham Lincoln vs Zombies is still out . . . if that’s all right?” 

Yeah, that was more than all right, but he looked at her bottle and made it seem like he wasn’t. “Might need to stock up on more if that’s what you’re gonna make me watch.” She started to say she could pick something else, and he said, “How can we watch a zombie movie, and not drink everytime they get something wrong?” 

“You’re on.” Should be an interesting night. If he had any flashbacks to Purgatory, he could cover it by pretending to watch the movie, and anytime he needed a drink he could have one. Plus, it gave him an excuse to get away from Sam for a little while, because he still didn’t know how he felt about anything Sam had said or done over the last couple of days.


	21. Identical Twin Convention

Sam pulled the cabin door open and didn’t really know what to make of the motley crew that’d knocked. It was like a bizarre identical twin convention. His Cas and the other Cas were on opposite sides of the group. Sam knew which one was which, because his Cas wasn’t wearing a trench coat. The other Sam was in the back glaring at Sam. One of the Deans and Beth were both slouching, had sunglasses on, and looked pale. One of the Deans was standing in the middle and looked annoyed, while he held Rogue, who was reaching out to Sam and wanting to be held.

The best greeting Sam could muster was, “Where’s Gabriel?”

The Dean holding Rogue said, “The other you banished him, so he could use Rogue’s blood to contact Beth on the other side.” 

_What?_ Sam quickly took Rogue from him and had a look at her to make sure she was all right while he let them into the cabin. Turning one of her hands over, Sam found a scar that was healing on her palm. His expression turned into a glare before he looked up at the other Sam passing by him. “She’s going to have this for life you know . . . How could you do that? She’s just a baby?” 

Returning Sam’s glare, the other Sam said, “How many kids have you killed? Besides, I thought you wanted me to find a way to get my brother out of Purgatory faster.” 

Dean put himself between the two and quietly said, “Calm down . . . You’re holding Rogue,” before the other Sam brushed past Dean’s back and went further into the room.

Looking back down at her, Sam nodded. “I’m sorry, Dean. I thought she’d be okay with Gabriel. I didn’t think –“ 

“She’ll be okay, but you might want to start wearing something silver the way I do, so she knows you’re you.” 

Sam hadn’t even thought of that. “Did she think I –“ 

Dean shook his head. “I don’t know. Probably just better if you do.” 

Yeah, okay. Sam glanced at Cas and Cas as they threw one another looks and then went to opposite sides of the room. “They giving you trouble?” 

Dean rolled his eyes. “Bout as much as you and the other Sam are. Not sure we’re supposed to like the other versions of us.” 

Sam looked at the Dean with sunglasses. “You having problems with –“ 

“Wasn’t until last night. He took off with Beth for most of the night, and nobody knew where they were.” 

_I’m not touching that one._ Dean should’ve fixed things with Beth a long time ago. Long before they left the last life, and if not then, then at least while they were in Purgatory, and if he hadn’t, then . . . yeah, Sam wasn’t going near that one with a 10-foot pole. 

Dean looked around the cabin and asked, “Did you have to come here?” 

“Yeah . . . I know Crowley doesn’t know where it is, and I knew the other me wouldn’t know about if I didn’t know about it until you showed it to me a couple of years ago.” 

This place had given his brother somewhere safe to go during an Apocalypse, and it was peaceful up here in Sayner, which is exactly what Kevin had needed after what he’d been through. It’d taken Sam a little time to find him, but using what Sam remembered from that TV show, he’d been able to do it without involving Kevin’s girlfriend, so she was still alive. It’s just that being on your own and on the run after having gotten away from the King of Hell wreaked havoc on your nerves. The hardest part now was convincing Kevin that the best thing to do was leave his Mom where she was instead of bringing her here, because she was safer where she was even if she was surrounded by demons.

Dean glanced at Rogue and said, “Can you keep an eye on her. I need a shower, and then I think I might hit the sack. I didn’t get any sleep last night.” 

“Yeah, no problem.” Dean slipped her bag off his shoulder, so Sam could take it, and then headed for the bathroom with his own bags without another word.

As soon as Dean was gone, Rogue looked up at Sam to whisper, “Dad . . . grrr,” and Sam laughed.

“Yeah, your Dad’s mad, but I think he’s mad at Dad.” 

She looked at the new Dean and said, “No Dad?” 

Sam laughed again. “Yeah, he’s probably mad at him too,” before he asked her if she wanted to go look at the lake. It wasn’t too far from here, and he wanted to see how she liked being near water that wasn’t frozen over.

When they came back in, Beth was arguing with the other Sam and Dean and telling them to forget about the demon tablet. “Crowley can have it. It’s useless without Kevin. I’ll give you guys the important stuff out of it. Kevin already knows the recipe for a demon bomb. There’s an exorcism you can use to kill demons instead of sending them back to Hell, a couple of wards . . . You can see hellhounds if you wear a pair of glasses after you run them over holy oil flames. That’s about it. Closing Hell for good is a bad idea.” 

They wanted to know why, and Sam said, “Because whoever does it dies at the end of the trials.” 

Beth added, “But mostly because if you lock up Hell, sure things can’t get out, but things can’t get in either. What happens to the souls that belong there? They get trapped in the veil. Pretty soon every spirit you encounter will be the worst of the worst, and you’ll be wishing that you only had a handful of demonic possession cases a year instead of thousands of new spirits that murdered men, women, and children when they were alive, war lords, scientists who fudged their results . . . you name it, and if they were going to Hell, they’re sticking around now . . . and it’s not like spirits can’t possess people too. Not only that, but if the system gets clogged up with all the crappy souls, what happens to the good souls the reapers have to try and find in all of the mess? They get stuck in the veil too and maybe they go vengeful if they aren’t found in time. Plus, what if even one of the reapers decides that they’re sick of the hassle involved in filtering through souls and just starts taking whatever souls there are to Heaven? Why should the ones who belong in Hell get to go up there, find a way out of their personal Heavens and terrorize the people who were good their whole lives? Even if they’re too stupid to do that, why should they get out of going to Hell?” 

The other Sam looked like he disagreed with that, but the other Dean started laughing. “Can we go back to the scientists who fudge their results part? You think that means they’re going to go to Hell?” 

Beth paused. “Crowley had scientists working for him in our timeline. I just assumed that’s how they got there.” 

The other Dean laughed again. “Never occurred to you that maybe they were Nazi scientists, something like that?” 

Sam laughed at the confused look on Beth’s face. “Guess not . . . She cheats on everything else, but apparently science is something she considers sacred.” 

Beth looked up at him with her sunglasses still on and retorted, “You say that now, but just wait until you’re given some medication by scientists who fudged their results and your limbs start falling off.” 

It looked like she was digging in on this one. “What about all the government agencies in place to keep that from happening?” 

She shook her head. “Do they look for every little thing that a medication could possibly have a negative side effect on? Nope. Why do you think pharmaceutical companies have to do recalls after a drug has come onto the market? And what if the governmental agencies are the ones who falsify their findings? That makes them even worse.”

Sam decided to change the subject. “What happened last night?” 

Beth glanced in the direction of the new Dean and said, “We went to see a movie, and then we stopped at a liquor store to get more alcohol and those red plastic cups and spent forever trying to find a 24-hour place to buy a ping pong ball, so we could play beer pong with whiskey and vodka on a park picnic table. I won.” 

Sam laughed and looked at the other Dean again. “You must have. If he’s like my brother, he hardly ever gets this hungover . . . how’d you do it?” 

When she clammed up the other Dean asked, “How’d she do what?” 

Grinning, Sam said, “Cheat without you knowing? She’ll go in cheating if she thinks she might lose, and I’m guessing she was already pretty far gone before you even started playing.” 

The other Dean looked at Beth and she shrugged. “Trade secret . . . can’t say.” 

The other Dean looked up at Sam again. “Does she really cheat all the time?” 

Sam nodded. “Yep . . . her Dad and Death have both had a word with her about it, but Gabriel is a pushover, and not even Death trying to drop her in the Big Empty worked.” 

The other Dean looked at Beth and said, “The Big Empty? Thought you said it was a lock up.” 

She told him about that, did she? Means the new Dean now knew what her Dean was willing to do for her. That’s why Sam’d been pushing the cheating thing, so he could set it up for her to explain how she met Death, but it wouldn’t hurt to give the other Dean a reminder. Beth quickly said, “Yeah, when he said I cheated, I said I didn’t, because he and the reaper who put me in my cell never said I had to say there. He said the locks implied it. Before I could argue with him too much, the ground dropped out from under me, and I had to try and hold onto the floor and climb back out of a big black void of nothingness until I could reach Dean’s leg, because he was glued to the floor . . . I told Death cheating helped me survive, and he said that it’s how I found myself in that particular predicament, and I said something about, ‘Let me guess, you can’t cheat Death,’ and then I started to say that it wasn’t my fault the locks on his cells were easy to crack . . . just like I said . . . just without the Big Empty part.” 

“That didn’t really happen, did it?” 

Sam answered the new Sam's question for her, “It did. Rogue and I found them dead. It’d already been a couple of days, so there’s nothing I could do, except bury them. I went back to our camp and told everyone there that they were gone, and then the next day Beth and Dean showed up at the front door covered in mud. Dean had pneumonia that almost killed him again.” 

The new Dean wanted to know why Beth got sent there, so Sam answered that too, “The Punishing angels in Hell signed a contract saying they’d release the demons from the abyss whenever Raphael wanted by leaving their signatures on Beth’s soul, which meant that if she died before her soul was finished, she wouldn’t go anywhere. It was a way to nullify the contract.” 

That’s when Sam realized his own brother had been listening, because he heard his voice coming from his left. “Not sure if she’s told you or not, but we’re soul mates . . . not just soul mates, but supercharged soul mates, so I went into my soul and crawled on over to her side, so she’d take me with her wherever she went.” 

The other Dean laughed, and said, “She might’ve said something about it . . . said you’ve got some freaky abilities, or -“

Dean walked up to Beth and pointed at the other Dean. “He doesn’t buy it. You’ve gotta show him.” Beth shook her head. “Do it.”

“I don’t want to . . . I’m not even sure it works anymore. It either –“ 

Dean had the knife in his hand before Sam knew what was happening. All he had time to do was half-turn with Rogue, so she wouldn’t see her Dad stab her Mom, when the sounds of a fight broke out. Looking over his shoulder, Sam saw the two Dean’s fighting, and Beth looking like she didn’t know what to do. She looked a lot like she had when Sam had fought with Dean in that one hotel, and he certainly didn't want her to be reminded of that, so Sam went up to hand her Rogue. “Go outside and –“ 

“Sam, I don’t know if it works anymore. It didn’t work in the other timeline, and it didn’t work when we went back home. It didn’t work in Purgatory either. I broke my arm, and nothing happened to him . . . What if we’re not close enough for it to work anymore . . . that’s what Cas suggested. I’m glad, because I don’t want him to get hurt because of me anymore, but I don’t know why it’s not working, or why it ever did.”

That stopped him. He looked over at the Deans throwing punches. One of them tackled the other one, but neither one was using a knife. He thought they’d be okay for 20 seconds. The last thing Dean needed to hear what she just said. She couldn’t tell Dean that . . . ever. “Ever think maybe that you were blocking him on this the way you’ve been blocking him from knowing what you’re thinking, and he couldn’t get around it, because he didn’t know he could? And maybe being in Purgatory wasn’t the right time for him to force it, because he’d have to be passed out while he tried to heal you?”

“No. I forgot I could block it without thinking about it after the Alpha Changeling . . . If it’s me . . . Sam, I think my head is overloaded with too many things. Maybe that’s why . . . I mean my blocking things was going haywire in the do-over universe . . . maybe I’m starting to lose it . . . I thought I was ready for this mission, but maybe I’m not. I had a hard time adjusting to life after we got Dean out of Hell . . . It’s why I was always on the move, and I was just about able to make it the last year, but then when I got home, it was really hard for me to shift gears to being in that universe again. I did it, and then I ended up in Purgatory, which was okay, but being back in a life like this with cars, electricity . . . people. I’m having a hard time adjusting again. I’m tired.“ 

Sam sighed. “We’ll deal with it later, but we’ll deal with it . . . okay?” Looking behind him at the two Deans, he saw the new Sam trying to pull them apart, so he went to help. They each ended up with a Dean by the end. Sam wasn’t sure, which one was his brother, until the Dean with the other Sam pointed at where Beth had been standing and said, “I was just gonna cut –“

“Are you fucking kidding me? You think that’s –“

“She can’t feel it! I feel it! I can heal her too . . . It wouldn’t –“

Sam shared a look with the other Sam, and the other Sam nodded, so they switched sides, and Sam pulled his brother out the front door. “Do you even know what you just did?” 

“I was trying to –“ 

“I know what you were trying to do, but do you actually know what you did?” 

Dean slumped and said, “Locked in a freezer, kind of bat shit crazy?” 

Sam breathed out a laugh. “Yeah, you could say that. Did you know that Rogue saw the whole thing?” 

Dean looked past him towards the cabin and shook his head. “No, I wasn’t thinking.” 

Sam got him to look at him again and said, “You’re not the only one this is taking a toll on. She forgot that she can block it . . . She doesn’t remember how to unblock it . . . Things could’ve gotten really bad if -“ 

“I can unblock her.”

Sam sighed. “I know, Dean . . . Doesn’t mean you should try to stab her to –“

“Wasn’t gonna stab her. Was just gonna cut the palm of her hand, so –“

“Like the other me did to Rogue?” 

Dean ducked his head. “No, like I wanted her to do one time when we were arguing, but she took off, and –“

“You should be the one fighting with someone for doing something like what you just tried to do . . . but I get it. You went straight from our do-over life and dealing with Hell to being in Purgatory and –“

Dean gave him a look. “That hasn’t got anything to do with it, Sam . . . don’t give a shit about being in Hell again . . . Beth went in and kicked Alistair’s ass . . . came up with the best way of torturing him . . . I mean what she did should turn him into a sobbing mess, and . . . I should’ve been proud of her, but I mostly thought she was twisted . . . and she kept her promise to me . . . said one time that if I ever ended up there again, she’d come find me, and she did, and I gave her shit for seeing me like that, when I’ve seen worse done to her. I gave her shit for being a nephilim . . . And the thing is . . . the me that did all that. The me that threw her away . . . He was as much me as that guy in there is or she and Rachel were . . . different lives . . . different people . . . but she won’t see it that way. And I know that guy in there . . . know what kinds of things he's thinking, and he wouldn't do any better than me with her, but she has a soft spot for me, and he is me, and she'll be the one who turns him around if we're here because of him . . . I just want her and me to be the way we were. I don't want to share, even if it's with me.”

Sam nodded and then smiled briefly. “Maybe try saying that to her, and, uh, if you want you two to be the way you were, don’t start off by being the way you were when you were crazy . . . or at least crazier than you normally are.”


	22. How'd I Become Him

“Hey, you all right?” 

I watched Rogue throw a rock in the lake and said, “Yeah, fine . . . just wasn’t sure how to break it up.” 

Purgatory Dean sat down next to me on the peer and said, “He do that kind of thing a lot?”

“Once. We were having an argument. I wanted to go with Gabriel to close the Gates of Hell and dig up Crowley’s bones . . . Dean wanted me to wait until after he got done doing what he was supposed to do, so he could come with me . . . It would've taken him weeks to do his job, and we didn't have weeks, so I didn’t want to wait. He slid a knife across the table towards me and told me to cut the palm of my hand. I didn't know until then that when I got hurt he would, but I knew why he wanted me to cut my hand and that he was using it to try and blackmail me into not going. It didn't work. I didn't cut my hand, and I took off anyway. While I was closing the gates, I found out he took the pain for me too. A hellhound clawed through my leg at the gate in Paris . . . Shouldn’t have happened, but I was still learning . . . anyway, it didn’t hurt me, so I didn't know anything had happened . . . I killed the hellhound, and then by the time I’d noticed my jeans were shredded after we closed the gate, my leg was healed, because Cas healed it on Dean, and that healed it on me.”

“You know it’s not normal, right?”

“Which part?”

He smiled and ducked his head. “None of it, but uh, telling you to cut yourself is one thing. Trying to do it himself is –“

“You're making a bigger deal of it than it actually is . . . It's not like he was going to stab me. I'm willing to bet every cent I've ever made that if you'd let it play out, he wouldn't have actually cut me. He might've grabbed my hand intending to put the handle of the knife in it, so I could do it myself, but he wouldn't have cut me. I'm guessing that after talking to Sam, he'll come back thinking he planned to slit my wrists, because Sam somehow has a way of getting him to think the worst about himself, and he didn't have a plan going in other than he wanted you to see what he could do, so whatever Sam thinks was going to happen will probably become what Dean thinks would've happened. He was desperate to show you that he's important to me . . . couldn't just be because he's important to me. Has to be something he can show you, and since you've met Rogue, it couldn't just be her, or that would've worked already. It had to be something like the ability to save my life better than you ever could . . . but he wasn't off the charts crazy . . . I've seen him like that, and . . . I don't make bets unless I know I'll win. I know I'm right . . . You and everyone else are on edge because of Purgatory, and Sam is . . . well, Sam has probably been on edge being alone with Kevin in this universe. He does not do well being around Kevin for very long."

"I don't do jealous."

"He . . . well, see . . . you've never done a long term -"

"I was with Lisa for a year."

"Yeah, I know, but . . . I don't know how to put this. Maybe, I guess . . . See, she may have known you were a hunter and knew what that meant on a very basic level, but she didn't really know what that meant, because she wasn't a hunter, which means it was something she could never truly understand about you, and that probably suited you just fine, because you wanted to be walled off from her in as many ways as you could without pushing her totally away. That doesn't mean she didn't mean something very real to you, but . . . it definitely made cutting her out to keep her safe easier to do than it would have been if you'd been all in, not that I'm guessing it was easy, but . . . easier. And with my Dean . . . first he was with Rachel, my other half, who got my body first and looked exactly like me, except she dressed different, wore tons of make up and had crazy hair . . . I think that's the second biggest reason people say we look totally different now, because we don't look all that different. Well, we did after she went monster, but not before that . . . Anyway, they were together for years, and she made him miserable. She cheated on him all the time, and after enough times, he did it too to get back at her . . . which I'm guessing made him feel even worse, but he couldn't cut ties, because she was close to Sam and because she was able to give Dean that extra back up for Sam that he thought he needed . . . and I guess, because he cared about her more than he'll ever admit to me . . . And he tried to build those walls with me that you did with Lisa, so he could keep me safe from him as much as this connection we have . . . If he takes the pain from my injuries and heals me, when I get hurt; then, when he gets dosed with venom or drugged or whatever, it'll happen to me, not him . . . Anyway, he or I were always almost dying, and we were always having to save one another. We lived together and hunted together. That made it harder for him to keep his distance from me than it was for you to keep your distance from Lisa or him to keep his distance from Rachel, because Rachel really did very little to put herself in actual danger and never did everything she had to do to save him . . . I know that now. I didn't before the do-over life. And I guess . . . maybe because his walls with me broke down, he started thinking of me being with other men the way Rachel used to be as a possibility because I look so much like her, and if that happened then maybe it would be as bad as if I died. And that's where the jealousy thing comes into it, because he could figure out ways to bring Sam back from being dead if that happened, and if Sam leaves, then there's a chance that Sam will come back, because he's Sam, but getting someone who isn't his brother to come back to him willingly after they've left . . . there's no way he'd think that was possible, so the preventative fear of keeping that from happening is probably why jealousy sometimes rears it's ugly head with him . . . well, that, and sometimes I think he'll always have that voice in the back of his head that tells him that I'll be better off without him . . . safer . . . and he does walk away a lot, which makes the jealousy thing stronger, because he really doesn't want that to be it . . . or that's the way it used to be. Now, I don't know. There were some issues raised during our do-over life that I never thought were issues, and they weren't all his issues. Some of them were mine."

When I glanced in his direction, he looked away and breathed out a laugh. "Wow. You don't hold back, do you?"

"What good has that ever gotten any of us?"

Clearing his throat, Purgatory Dean said, "You said that your fashion sense being different is the second biggest reason why people think you and Rachel look different. What's first?"

Honestly? "Personality. She was awful. If you're awful, it rubs off on how people see you."

He laughed, like he wasn't sure. "There a third reason?"

"I'm older . . . People naturally look different as they age."

Thankfully, he decided to drop it after that. I didn't really want to talk about Rachel. I hadn't really had much time to process that she was actually dead yet. "And this thing your guy can do with the healing . . . it really works?"

I hesitated for a few seconds. "It used to work . . . The truth is that it hasn't worked in a while now. I have no idea why. I mean it didn’t work in that life we re-lived . . . Didn’t work when we got home either. Didn’t work in Purgatory when I broke my arm . . . not that I’m complaining, because I don’t want him to get hurt because of me, but I don’t know why it stopped working. Testing it, the way he was suggesting is something we should do. I just don’t want to test it. I don’t want to find out why it’s not working if it’s something bad, but maybe it’s just because I can block it. I mean, I can block angels from knowing what I’m thinking, demons too . . . I used to be able to block this thing from happening to Dean too . . . and I can do all of that without thinking about it. One of the benefits of being shattered, I guess. Different parts of my head do different things without me knowing. He can also unblock me if he uses his emotions to do it . . . like let’s say I’m bleeding to death in another part of the country . . . he can unblock me and have an angel heal him or do it himself if he’s pissed off or worried enough about what’s happening to me. If he’d thrown the knife at me, then I’d probably . . . well, I’d probably be annoyed, but I wouldn’t be pissed about it either. I have a high pain threshold . . . another benefit of being shattered . . . probably.”

“And you being in Heaven . . . Why’d they do it? Was it just to sign this contract or –“

“They didn’t do that until they saw how much my soul could withstand without disintegrating. They kept me in Heaven, because I was the kill switch for my monster-twin, Rachel . . . They wanted her to do the things I was supposed to do with Dean in those prophecies, but act as a sleeper agent for them . . . They took me and did all those things to me, because of what I was born . . . Angels are supposed to kill nephilim as soon as they’re born. If they don’t know about them, they’re supposed to kill them if they ever come across one . . . They consider nephilim abominations.”

“Think they think everything that isn’t one of them an abomination . . . Your Cas . . . You’re the reason he doesn’t want to be an angel anymore, right?”

Taking a deep breath, I nodded before handing Rogue another rock to throw. “Yeah . . . He went into one of my nightmares, one of my memories from what happened to me in Heaven . . . I didn’t know he was going to do it. I was asleep. In my dream, he got there a little late, and he slaughtered all the prison guards, so it turned into a good dream, but I was still a mess . . . When I woke up, he was lying in a pool of blood in the bathroom. I couldn’t get the bleeding to stop, so I called Dad. Cas gave him his grace, and Dad gave it to me. It’s what I showed you when we met. Nobody else knows I have it. I think it’s in case of emergencies on this mission . . . Cas can take it back if he needs it.”

Purgatory Dean nodded, while he absorbed that. “What happens to you if that breaks near you?”

“What?” I looked down at my chest and said, “I don’t know . . . you mean because they took mine?”

He shrugged, and I didn’t really know how to answer that. “I don’t know . . . My grace turned Rachel into a monster, but that’s because half a soul is too unstable to contain the power of grace . . . She still hunted for years though, and she saved people even if she was lazy and selfish about it . . . She didn’t go full monster until after she died. I’m human, and I have a whole soul, so I don’t really know . . . If it broke near me, Cas’s grace would float away into outer space? Not sure how we’d get it back if that happened. Maybe I shouldn’t keep it on me during a hunt.”

Dean laughed and looked down, like he thought he should probably drop it. “How long were you in Heaven again? 29 years or 35.” 

Considering I was up a tree, and we were in Purgatory when I said that, him remembering that much wasn’t half bad. “From the day I was born until I was 29. The torture wasn’t continuous for me the way it was with you . . . if that’s why you’re asking. I didn’t start breaking out of my cell until I was around 7, and then for the first 12 or 13 years after that, it only happened after I broke out. I wouldn’t be able to move again for days or weeks or sometimes months, depending on the guard, but as soon as I could, I’d break out again . . . then after I got caught in Raphael’s office, and the Punishing Angels did their thing . . . Prison security started pushing themselves harder to be more like the Punishing Angels and got more creative. They started letting me almost heal before they’d do it again, so I wouldn’t have a chance to break out. All that meant is that I had to start breaking out before I was anywhere close to being healed and try to stay hidden for longer . . . probably not an easy thing to watch someone you care about go through in vivid detail . . . and Dean did. Crowley sent his consciousness there when I let Crowley take the souls from Purgatory. It’s probably - ” 

“You did what with the souls in Purgatory?!”

I laughed at his reaction. “When Cas was supposed to get those souls from Purgatory, I was there. So was Crowley. I tricked Cas into saving me instead of taking the souls. Crowley killed Raphael . . . It was part of the deal. When we were helping him put the souls back, Crowley turned on Dean and sent Dean’s psyche to Heaven when I was there, so Dean was forced to watch everything bad thing that ever happened to me, and he couldn’t do anything about it. His body was with us . . . he looked semi-catatonic, but then Cas took whatever it was from him, and Dean came out of it . . . different. Cas did too, but all Cas experienced when he was unconscious was floating in a big black void of nothing . . . like if he were in the Big Empty, maybe . . . maybe they saw what they were most afraid of happening to me or something?”

Purgatory Dean shook his head. “Wouldn’t want anyone I know seeing what happened to me.”

Throwing another blade of grass into the lake, I said, “Me neither, but it happened, and there isn’t anything I can do about it.” 

Dean changed the subject. “You mentioned angel-demons last night . . . What the hell are those?” 

_Ugly?_ “They’re just what they sound like. Something that used to be an angel and was tortured enough to become a demon. Azazel was one. You could tell, because he had yellow-eyes.” 

Dean glanced at me and said, “And a full-blooded demon?” 

_Even uglier._ “A demon born of a demon, and I don’t mean like Jesse, the anti-Christ kid, you met. No meat suit involved. They have big bat wings and tales, and ugly faces that look something like a bat mixed with a pig . . . they’re even more powerful than that Jesse kid, but they’re stupid, so they’re easy to kill . . . you just have to be able to get close enough to cut their head off with an angel blade.” 

“That the worst thing you guys have fought?” 

“Sam was the worst thing we had to fight. He was the weakest of the three big bads we initially had to deal with, and he wasn’t all that weak. There was an emotional component to confronting him, because he’s Dean's brother . . . that made it harder, but it would be wrong to say that’s all it was. He was well organized and made killing 200 kids a week look efficient and easy. Those don’t include the ones that died from disease, malnutrition, or just because his demons got a little rough.” 

Sounding confused, Dean said, “200?” 

“He turned all the adults he found into monsters or meat suits. He used the kids for something else. He had 80 monster alliances set up around the country. Every other week, 40 of them would have 5 kids sent to them in the back of a truck. The monsters were starving because most people were Croats. It’s why Sam released the virus. It was so he could get control of the monsters through their food source.” 

I knew that look. Dean briefly looked pissed off and hid it before saying, “Any idea how many were lost?” He believed me easier than my Dean had when he couldn’t remember our life. I wondered why.

“Not really. We don’t know exactly when he started doing it, but he was probably going for a few months before we knew what was happening. My guess would be tens of thousands . . . When we found out about it, Dean took the other hunters on a raid of the trading posts, but to find them, they had to follow the trucks all the way to the trading posts, so they lost a few kids, but they still managed to bring about 180 home with them after they found the kids that the monsters rationed themselves on between feeding days, killed all the monsters at the trading posts, and burnt the trading posts to the ground . . . That’s what he was going to do when we had that fight about me waiting for him to close the Gates of Hell . . . Anyway, the next week when the trucks left the city on their way to the other 40 trading posts, the hunters just stopped all the trucks when they got far enough away from Vegas not to be noticed, because Dean had something else he needed to do, and they brought all 200 kids home that time. It took Vegas a long time to get back up and running again after that, and we had a few other things to do, and then we missed a couple of shipments, but then we were able to shut Vegas down, and brought all the kids on the back of the trucks along with the ones in the camp home. There were only around 2000 left by that point.” 

There was that look again. “Other things to do? What the hell could you possibly have to do that’s more important than stopping something like that?” 

Limited resources, and triaging to take care of the most immediate things we could was what happened. “Well, uh, Crowley and Sam opened all 7 of the Gates of Hell around the world. That’s why I needed to close them. Every time we exorcised a demon, so we could save the meat suit, the demons were back out in 15 minutes to maybe an hour. Dad was with me, but by the last gate in Wyoming, there were millions, maybe even billions of demons waiting for us. Most of them weren’t in bodies, so you could only see them with the hellhound glasses on, and they had weapons that did as much damage as ones that aren’t invisible . . . They were stretched out along the ground as far as the eye could see, and there were reinforcements in a holding pattern above the gate. From far away, it just looked like a really dark cloud. Dean and Cas came to help us close that gate. That’s why they didn’t shut down the second batch of 40 trading posts. 

We closed the gate, and then Sam showed up and banished Cas and my Dad. It was just Dean and I and Sam and millions of demons, and Sam was not on our side. I accidentally got some help from God because of the things I was thinking. He whipped up a hurricane in the snow to hide us and disorient the demons and made lightning that killed any demons it touched. Dean and I ran 50 miles in the snow and lightning, dodging demons and hellhounds the entire way. 

Then Dean and I had to find a way to walk back to our camp here in Wisconsin through snow that was at least 5 ½ to 6 feet deep, and then an aswang killed Dean, and I passed out for days . . . that’s what happens when he dies. I pass out and go into my soul . . . He came back, but I still wouldn’t wake up, and Sam was hot on our trail, so Dean dealt with that and carried me for days until he found somewhere to hide out . . . and I started dying on him over and over again . . . when I eventually woke back up, all the CPR he'd done to bring me back had done a number on me, so we had to stay there for a while, and then when I recovered, we started walking again and found 11 kids in the middle of Nebraska, so we brought them with us, and eventually we found a truck and were able to bring all 13 of us back. 

When we got back, there were about 50 people from River Pass, where the Horseman of War touched down. They’d made it because of some things I taught them about demons. It made me think we should look for more of Dean’s saves from when he was a hunter, because maybe not all of them were dead. Then we found out I was pregnant, but we couldn’t tell anyone about it, so it was business as usual. We got in touch with Dean’s Mom and some other hunters in heaven through Pamela and Missouri, and the Dead Hunters Society started looking for lists of people that we gave them. 

The first time we talked to his Mom, she sent us to North Dakota to get Gwen, his cousin, who was a prisoner on a monster farm. The men running the place were making people become wendigos, so they could trade them to Crowley for women . . . We shut that farm down and tried to have a little more face time at the camp, because people were starting to get pissed off that we were always out on the road, and that’s why we missed the first couple of convoys out of Vegas when they started back up.” 

“Wendigos? Those take a long time to be made.” 

“Not as long as you’d think, and Crowley had it in the works before the outbreak, because he knew what Sam was planning with the monsters.” 

“How many?”

“How many were running it or how many did we save?” 

“Save.” 

He was the first person who’d asked that instead of asking how many people, I’d killed there. “18 women from the basement. 2 half-Amazon, half-succubus women from the basement, 9 people from the first stall. About the same in the second. The rest weren’t savable.”

“Is that the worst thing he saw?” I shook my head, so he said, “What’s the worst thing the other me saw . . . other than what happened to you?” 

I was going to answer that, but instead it came out as, “Why?” 

He looked back at the house and said, “Every time I think I understand him, I find out I don’t. Like the way he was in Purgatory made sense if you’ve got more monsters than humans. But then he was able to turn all that off, and he’s actually good with his kid, and I don’t know how he does it, but he does. I wanna know how I became him, and I know he won’t tell me. I doubt his brother will tell me, because he’s his brother, not mine . . . Cas probably knows him pretty well, but I’m staying clear of your Cas until I can get a better read on him too, so that leaves you, and you like to talk . . . a lot.” Oh.


	23. From One Dean to Another Part 1

Dean watched the Dean they’d picked up in Purgatory and leaned into Sam’s shoulder. “He’s not letting me anywhere near her.” 

Sam watched the new Dean who was listening to Rogue jabber on about the cards. “I don’t know. He seems to be taking an interest in Rogue. It makes sense. He probably never thought that he could pull off being a hunter and a Dad.” 

"Nah, that’s just what he wants us to think.”

Sam sighed. “You could always test it and see what he does if you go over there.” 

Dean looked at Sam. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t that make it seem like I’m . . . needy or jealous or something?” 

Seriously? “I think trying to cut Beth, so you can prove you’re her supercharged soul mate, and not just a normal soul mate the way he is probably did that . . . I mean what was that anyway, the hunter equivalent of pulling her pigtails? I know why you did it. Nobody else does. She definitely doesn’t, and right now you should be over there groveling to get back with her the way you should’ve done in Purgatory or anytime since or even before that when we got back to our other life, because it was clear that’s what you wanted then. Or at any point in the 7 months since you made the asinine decision to break up with her in the other life, or -” 

Dean gave him annoyed look. “Okay, all right . . . I get it. I’m an idiot. How do I fix it?” 

Sam watched Beth for a few seconds. “Do what I said earlier. Think it was pretty solid advice . . . don’t ignore it the way you did when I told you how to get her to stop giving you the silent treatment . . . and stop being crazy.” Dean gave Sam a side glare and told him to shut up when Sam started laughing. He’d had enough of Sam and got up to go over to his family that the other him was trying to move in on.

As soon as he got over there, Rogue looked up at him and said, “Dad hit?” 

Dean looked at Beth, and she asked Rogue, “What’d he hit?” 

Rogue looked at the other Dean and pointed at him. Oh. “Uh, me and Not Dad –“ 

She shook her head. “No, no Dad . . . Unc-le Dad.” 

Right. Somehow she was smart enough to keep all of them straight . . . not sure how she learned the word uncle for this guy and still hadn’t gotten it for Sam, but maybe Sam had something to do with that, because he didn’t want to be called Uncle Sam. “Uh, me and Uncle Dad were, uh,” he looked at Beth, and she raised her eyebrows, like he might as well tell the truth, because Rogue saw everything. “Yeah, we hit each other.” 

Giving him a serious look, Rogue said, “Hit tect?” 

Not really, but she was supposed to be learning right from wrong. How should he spin this? “Uh, well, Uncle Dad thought I was playing too rough with your Mom, so he was trying to protect her, and I hit him back . . . maybe to protect myself.” 

Rogue looked at the other Dean and pointed at herself while she said, “I tect Mom,” and then she pointed at Dean and said, “Dad tect Mom . . . Uncle Dad no tect Mom.” 

Awesome. His little girl was backing him up, and then Beth said, “Unless?” 

Rogue looked back at her and then looked at the Dean from Purgatory. “Ask Mom?” 

Looking to Beth for help, the Dean from Purgatory said, “I have no idea what is happening here.” 

“Uh, well . . . we’re trying to teach her when and when not to hit people. She punched her best friend Lily in the face, because Lily started calling Dean, Dad, the way Rogue does. Dean told her not to hit people unless she’s trying to protect somebody. When we came back from our 13-year not-vacation and Dean didn’t remember being her Dad, she called him Not Dad. He and I were arguing about something. She punched him in the leg. She was trying to protect me, because her Dad told her that it was their job to protect me. Since her Dad wasn’t there, she thought that meant it was all her job . . . and I told her that her Dad was right, that she could hit people if she was trying to protect herself or somebody else, but that she was too young to know when someone needed to be protected, so she should ask me first.” 

The Dean from Purgatory ran his hand down his face and shook his head before he looked at Rogue. “I think you’re the only sane one here. So, you think I should’ve asked your Mom if she needed to be protected before I hit your Dad?” Rogue nodded, and then looked at Beth to see what she said. Dean wanted to hear what Beth had to say about that too. 

“I didn’t need to be protected, but I could see how your Dad's behavior would make other people think I did . . . even though I know he wasn't going to hurt me . . . not even a little.“ 

So, Beth didn't think he'd been planning on cutting her. At this point, Dean had no idea. He hadn't thought he was, but then the next thing he knew, he'd been disarmed and was fighting with the other him . . . Then Sam asked him if he knew what he'd done . . . To get the reaction he'd gotten from everyone, he must've looked bad enough to warrant it even if he wasn't sure now if he'd ever planned on cutting Beth's hand. 

Ducking his head, Dean said, “Yeah . . . I was just . . . think I got a little excited about show and tell and what I brought for class wasn’t working . . . Instead of trying to fix it, I smashed it all to hell.” He looked up when Beth started laughing. Did that mean they were okay? 

She watched him for a second and then breathed out another laugh before she looked at Rogue and said, “What do we do when we hit people we shouldn’t hit?” 

Rogue looked up at both Deans, like she was teaching them a lesson. “Hug.” 

Both Deans started laughing until they saw how serious she was about it. The new Dean quickly put that one to rest. “It all right, if I say sorry?” Rogue nodded, and Dean didn’t want him to beat him to it. He needed to let Beth know he wasn't going to do this whole whole being jealous thing again. It didn't happen very often, but it did sometimes, and he really didn't like who it made him, so he looked at Beth and said, “I’m sorry . . . won’t happen again.” 

“Dad.” 

Dean sighed and looked at the new Dean. “Sorry.” 

The other Dean laughed again. “Guess I’m sorry too . . . even if I’m not really . . . think you drawing blood would’ve –“ Beth cleared her throat, and the other Dean rolled his eyes. “Next time I’ll wait until after you stab her, so you have something to be sorry about before I do anything to stop you . . . sorry I didn’t do that this time.” Dean and Beth both laughed, and the Dean from Purgatory relaxed with a brief smile that said he still thought they were crazy, but he’d roll with it. 

After that, everything seemed to be okay again, so Dean went to the fridge, grabbed two beers, and handed one to the other Dean. Something as small as an action like that is all he needed as far as apologies went, so maybe it was enough for the other him, because what just happened in the other room had been mostly for Rogue and Beth. 

The other Dean took his beer and headed out the back door. It looked like he wanted Dean to follow him, so Dean went too, and as soon as they were outside, the other Dean said, “Explain that to me again? You got excited about show and tell?” That seemed about right, so Dean shrugged. “So, it had nothing to do with me and her going out last night? You’ve been pissed off since we got back, and I thought, 'I don't get jealous. Can't be that,' until Beth said that's probably what it was.” 

_Yeah, well she would know._ “She doesn't think I was going to hurt her."

"You're right. She doesn't, but what about what you think? How the hell don't you know what you were planning to do? Seems to me like she's in denial, and you're willing to go along with that . . . play like you're crazy and don't know, so you can get a free pass.” 

It was kind of like getting yelled at by his reflection in the mirror, and maybe that’s what he needed. “You really think the knife thing was that bad?” 

The other Dean looked like he didn’t know whether to laugh or yell. “If I hadn’t stepped in, I think you would’ve hurt her . . . I mean is that something you do and think is okay? You might be good for your daughter, but you’re not good for Beth.” 

“And you are?“

"And there it is . . . This isn't about me. You need to admit to yourself and Beth that you’re not good for her, so you can both put this behind you.” 

“I wasn't gonna hurt her. I just wanted you to see what we can do, so -"

"You could prove that you can save her in a way I can't to keep me from making a move on her while you dick around and leave her hanging?" 

How right he'd gotten that made Dean take a step back. His mirror reflection noticed. "That didn't come from me. It's what she said . . . And news flash. I'm not making any moves there. Don't know where the hell you get the idea I would, but -" 

"I would."

"Not from where I'm standing you wouldn't."

"Why the hell not?" That guy would be lucky to be with her. 

"So, now you're getting pissed off, because I don't want to fuck up her life like that? I mean, I’m not all there. I know that, but you . . . what the hell happened to you?"

"I wasn't gonna hurt her . . . Look, I might've gone in aggressive, but I don't think I would've done anything . . . can't say for sure. Wasn't thinking past that second, but I've never done anything like that to her . . . I guess I did knock her head into a doorframe and lock her in a freezer one time to get her to talk to me, and I'm not excusing that, but I was really fucked up . . . I'm not sure if I really even knew it was her or that it was real or what I was doing . . . This wasn't like that."

"Shouldn't have pushed it after she said, 'no.'"

"You got me there . . . Would've worked though if she had cut her hand. You just don’t believe it, because you haven’t seen it. If you’re around long enough, you probably will. She gets hurt a lot . . . I usually save it for the really bad things, but for you, I’ll make an exception. Next time she gets a paper cut, I’ll do it.” As soon Dean said that, he remembered something she did after they got back to their camp in South Dakota . . . That’s why she’d given herself a paper cut. She’d wanted to see if he felt it. He hadn’t. Did that mean it didn’t work at all anymore? Was she blocking him without knowing she was? If she wasn't, and he started getting hurt whenever she did again, then what did that mean? Did he make this happen? Did it not work if he didn’t know about it? Maybe he wanted to test it now more than he had earlier. 

The other Dean popped the cap off his beer and said, “Have to hand it to you two. I'm not even sure what I saw anymore, but that freezer thing doesn't sound good. I mean I get that it’s too late to really get out now that you’ve got a kid, but –“ 

“I'm not going anywhere. I just need to get back to the way I was before . . . I don’t know . . . before Adam died, and if I can be that guy again. Things’ll be good again, cause that’s who I was starting to be again before I signed us up for our crappy holiday/training session.” 

It was something Beth had said to him a long time ago. She’d been right. Before Adam died, if he and Beth could get through anything together. And then Adam died, and . . . he couldn’t handle it, so he left, and he never really came back. He’d been starting to get there again, but then Chuck showed up and threw a wrench in it.

It’s not that the working holiday life had sucked. Things were really good between them until the last couple of years, but even at their best in that life, things still hadn’t been as good as the years when he and Beth were getting to know each other in their real life, trying to stop the Apocalypse, and saving as many people as they could after the outbreak . . . or finding out they were gonna be parents and getting ready for that . . . All of that was harder, but better and meant more than the time they spent together when they were teenagers and twenty-somethings. 

“I heard you guys saved Adam from the ghouls. You were there when he died?” 

Remembering that he wasn’t out here alone, Dean glanced over at the other Dean. “Rachel was tracking us to try and find Beth . . . Crowley told us about it . . . wanted to make some kind of a deal. If we helped him get the souls out of Purgatory, he’d take care of Raphael and leave humans alone for a few generations, so we could repopulate . . . Wasn’t a bad deal, but I was done making deals, so I trapped him and took him to a church. Figured we’d wait for Rachel there, and in the meantime, we could cure Crowley of being a demon. We’d already done it with Meg, and it worked. She’s one of our best hunters, and she is loyal. She knows all kinds of things about demons and Hell, and I knew he wouldn’t be a hunter, but what he knows would more than make up for it . . . We had the place set up, so Rachel could only come in through a couple of entrances and did the cure at the front of the church, so I keep my eye on everything. Takes about 8 hours to do the cure. We’d just passed the 7-hour mark, and Adam was checking the windows. Got to a window about half-way down on my left-hand side, and Rachel was . . . just standing there looking back at him. He shot out the window, and we both took cover. He was saying something about -” 

Dean took a shaky breath and smiled briefly. “He said that my ex was fugly, cause me and Rachel were together before me and Beth were . . . The angels set it up, so I’d meet her, and since I guess I’m even soul mates with the shit parts of Beth’s soul, we got together and stayed together. I didn’t know Rachel was a monster back then. Mostly thought she was a cheating bitch, but the thing about Beth and Rachel is . . . they were complete opposites . . . makes sense, I guess, cause they’re opposites sides of the same soul, but the way me and everyone else treat them is opposite. 

I hated being with Rachel, but I couldn’t leave, and Sam loved her . . . I never want to leave Beth, but I leave all the time, and Sam’s hated her most of the time they’ve known each other . . . doesn’t take much to convince him to want to kill her. If you went in there right now with a good enough reason, he’d be sold on it in no time . . . ‘bout the only thing Rachel and Beth ever had in common is hunting. Rachel was a good hunter, but I never had to worry about her, because I knew if it came down to her and another person, she’d choose her life over theirs . . . means I had to hustle twice as hard to save that person, but Rachel wasn't going anywhere. Beth is a great hunter, and I worry about her all the time. Sometimes it’s like she doesn’t think she’s done a good enough job if it’s just a save, and she hasn’t had to bleed for it . . . Anyway, uh, Rachel, was a monster by the time we ran into her at the church, and she looked like it. That’s why Adam said it. 

I told him she was just going full-monster, cause she knew he’d be a bitch and she could feed off his fear or something, and he said that no matter how bad his beer goggles were, he never went home with anyone that looked like that. I said something, like, uh, like, you mean all the chicks you went home with after I warmed ‘em up for you, or the ones that never happened, cuz you struck out when you went in on your own, and uh . . . he called me an ass. He used to call me that when, uh, when I annoyed him, and I remember saying, “Or best wingman ever,” and then all hell broke loose.” 

Running his hand through his hair, Dean left it at the back of his head and closed his eyes, while he took a deep breath to contain his emotions as he remembered that night. “There were bullets flying everywhere from every side of the church . . . If you think Beth’s fast when she taps into her soul . . . that ain’t nothin’ compared to what Rachel could do with the power from her grace . . . felt like there was a whole battalion of angels surrounding us with guns, but it was just her, and . . . I was trying to get to Adam, so we could come up with a plan. I heard him calling for me . . . He was panicking, and he just kept shouting my name over and over again and asking me if I’d been hit. I told him to hold tight a couple of times . . . I don't think he heard me, cause the next thing I knew he told me to stay where I was, and that he’d come to me, and, uh, I saw him start to get up . . . She probably would've killed him then and there if I hadn't tackled him, and when I looked down there was all this blood everywhere.”

Dropping his hand, Dean glanced at the other Dean, and the other Dean was listening, so Dean said, “It was bad. The bullet was still in him, and I had to get it out. I nearly had it, but it slipped, and he told me to leave it, but I couldn’t . . . maybe I should have, I just . . . I just wanted to get it out, so I could put the Celox in and stop the bleeding until I could get him to Beth. I knew she could fix it. As soon as I got the bullet out more blood started pouring out of him, and I thought that it was bad, but if I put the Celox in he still had a chance, and I went to get it out of my bag, but it wasn’t there. 

Adam didn’t notice, or if he did, he didn’t say anything about it . . . all he said was that he wanted his gun, because he thought Rachel was in the church with us. I gave him his gun, and he settled back down . . . I told him I was gonna have to pack his wound until I could get him somewhere else to get what we needed, and then I heard Rachel.

She was walkin’ up the center isle and asked if I was missing something, and I knew she had it . . . the Celox . . . She was so fast that she got it without me even knowing, and it’d been right beside me. I tried to concentrate on packing his wound, and she was saying all this shit in Beth’s voice about how she could’ve killed me, but she wanted me to watch him die first . . . that the things she was feeding off of from me watching him die were even better than what she got from me when I watched Sam kill a girl in Vegas . . . and I tried blocking her out after that, but Adam . . . that’s when Adam . . . I don’t know how he did it, but he was with me one second, and the next he was kicking himself out into the center isle, so he could take her down . . . shot her in the chest and neck, but she got one off in his shoulder, and I . . . I emptied my clip into her head . . . It was overkill, but I knew before I even looked at him again. The first one was enough to kill him. The second one would. I asked him why he did it, and . . .” 

This is where it got hard. He hadn't let himself think about any of this since it happened. “He, uh, he said, that when Rachel was talking, it sounded like Beth, and that’s why he didn’t do anything about it until he heard what she was saying . . . didn't want it to tarnish his memory of Beth . . . and then he said that wasn’t the only reason he did it . . . He didn’t want to leave me alone with Rachel the way he’d left Beth alone after he got shot in the woods . . . here actually . . . it's where our first camp was . . . If he was going out, he wanted Rachel gone first, so he’d know I’d be all right. 

And then he asked . . . he asked me to take Beth’s amulet off and hand it to him. They traded off on wearing it during their hunts, like it was good luck charm . . . said he needed to see it. To hold onto it . . . I think it’s because he was scared, and he needed part of her there with him . . . He knew he was dying, and the thing he wanted more than anything was Beth, but I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to get him to her . . . And then he started telling me that he wanted me to tell her that it wasn’t her fault. He knew she’d blame herself, because Rachel was half of her . . . wasn’t a half of her that she knew anything about any better than you or me know what the other has been doing all this time, but he knew that wouldn’t matter . . . Then he said that it meant a lot to him that I trusted him enough to be Beth’s partner when I had to go out on the road with Sam before the Zombie Apocalypse.”

Dean slowly released a breath before the next part. “He said it was good to know that he had a brother who trusted him as much as he trusted his brother . . . and then he started crying and saying he needed Beth . . . I told him he wasn’t dying, and he got it together and started asking about Crowley . . . I’d forgotten all about him. He was long gone. Didn’t really care.

I finished using the last of what we had to pack his shoulder, and then I picked him up and started carrying him to the truck, and he said . . . he said thanks for giving him 3 extra years and for being his . . . for being his big brother, and that he’d really wanted to be an uncle, but it was on Sam now . . . and even though they hated one another most of the time they knew each other, he wanted me to tell Sam that he’d see him again, cause he knew Sam had this . . . I guess he meant that Sam would make up for what he did to the world, and then . . . Adam . . . he just ran out of time to tell me what to tell Beth. I know that’s what he was gonna say next, but he didn’t get the chance to say it . . . that was it. He was gone. I got him to the truck and saw the Celox sitting on the driver’s seat . . . if I’d just taken him out to the truck after she was dead . . . ”

Dean paused again to take another deep breath before he said, “I knew it was over, but I couldn’t let go. Convinced myself that if I could just get his heart started again, I could fix it . . . We had the same blood type. I had a way to stop the bleeding now that I had the Celox . . . I worked on him for about 30 or 45 minutes, but I couldn’t get his pulse back, and I couldn’t do the pyre there in the middle of nowhere. 

I thought about taking him to the Wisconsin camp, because it was only a half a day back, but after what happened here when they hunted him, Beth, and Cas . . . it changed him, and he hated this place and the people here, so I wrapped him up and put him in the back, because I couldn’t stand to look at him the whole way back to South Dakota . . . took almost two weeks to get him there. 

We did the pyre . . . headed out with Sam the next day . . . By the time we got to Nova Scotia, my mind was made up . . . What happened to Adam was my fault . . . It was my decision to stop and engage in that church before I knew what we were really dealing with . . . and for pulling the bullet out and then losing the Celox the way I did . . . I killed Adam, and I thought like you did that Beth and our kid were better off without me. 

I said what I had to say to make Sam go look after them, and then I watched Beth destroy Crowley’s entire topside army. Kevin and Sam were in one snow plough. Meg, Abbey, Cameron, and Beth each had their own, and that’s all they had against tens of thousands of monsters and two or three times that many in demons . . . They got some help from God at the end to clean it all up, but they pulled it off and put the tablets back, and I thought they’d definitely be all right without me, so I left before I could change my mind, and then -”

He never talked this much, but it was definitely like talking to himself in the mirror. Made it easier somehow. “Beth went into labor.” Dean paused to look out into the woods with a sigh before adding, “Around the same time Sam was telling her that Adam was dead, and the first thing she said was that she killed Adam, so I didn’t even keep that promise I made Adam . . . And she almost died . . . It's something I’d been worried about since almost the start, cause what happens to her, happens to me, and I can fix that, but her being a woman, and me being a man . . . If something went wrong there, I couldn’t do anything about it . . . And she went through that alone. Kicked Sam out of the room and didn't pray for Cas until it was almost too late . . . She looked dead when I came back, and that was after whatever Cas did to heal her. He was de-powered at the time. Think he stole some of Crowley’s souls to do what he did.

Anyway he handed me Rogue and took Beth . . . didn’t just take her to Hell and have Crowley help him babysit her. He took every single memory she’d ever had of me . . . and then after that, it was one thing after another to make her life as shitty as possible . . . all because I left . . . So, you’re wrong. It’s not me being with her that’s bad for her. It’s when I try to leave, and I’ve done it more than once, because I’m like you . . . I start thinking that I’m bad for her, and every time I do leave, it fucks her over more . . . She’s smart and independent and can do a lot on her own, but she makes a lot dumb decisions for someone as smart as she is, and she’s kind of naïve on a lot of things and stubborn, and she never fights back for herself against other people. She needs somebody to do it because they’re always attacking her, and –“ 

The other Dean said, “You’re kidding right?” 

“Why? Because of what you saw in Purgatory? She was fighting monsters. That kind of fight leaves her when it comes to people . . . unless they’ve hurt other people. Then she’ll fight and kill for the people who have been tortured and murdered by other people for fun . . . She doesn’t like being hurt by other people, but she doesn’t want to hurt them if it’s just for her . . . I don’t know. Maybe she thinks she can’t be impartial if she does, and it’s not like she takes handing down her sentences lightly . . . except maybe with the people who were buying and selling other survivors as slaves. They ripped apart families. They’d work their slaves almost to death, and then they’d trade them for guns and ammunition or food to monsters or people selling those people to monsters . . . Beth ripped off the Ezekiel 25:17 quote from Pulp Fiction while she was handing down her verdict for that, and when she got to the ‘And I will strike down up on thee’ part, she had Cas light the place up like he did when we met him that barn.” 

Dean waited for the other him to smile at the thought of that and said, “Yeah, and then she had Cas send them to Leviathan camp . . . half of them had borax, and the other half had machetes, and she told them if they wanted to get out of there, they’d have to learn how to work together and treat each other like people or die . . . That’s what she does . . . She delivers verdicts. When she killed the people running the wendigo farm . . . when there was no way out for the ones that were left . . . she said, ‘This is what happens when you turn victims into monsters. You die the way the monsters do.’ She did the same thing with Sam. She shot him in both ankles, both knees, and a shoulder. Then she took out his entire room of demons, pulled him out from under the desk, dragged him into the middle of the room . . . broke the tablet we got at the devil’s gate, so he’d know his quest to become God was over, had Cas, Balthazar, Gabriel, take the pieces and drop them in volcanoes, and then she told Sam that he would live with what he’d done, and he’d have to earn back the right to have his injuries healed . . . In case you think any of that makes her a problem . . . it doesn't. It's just . . . we’re the judge, jury, and executioners for monsters, and we’ve always let people go, because there are cops and courts and jails to deal with them, but that’s not the world we live in there.”

“You let her do that to Sam?” 

Dean glanced back at the door to make sure nobody was listening and said, “I walked into the penthouse of the Luxor unarmed to prove to her how far gone Sam was . . . I wanted her to see what he did to me and have it flip that switch to make her like you saw in Purgatory . . . I just didn’t know when I walked in there that he had Julie and Ryan too. He killed Ryan first. He died fast . . . before he really knew what was happening. Then Sam went over to Julie. She was 14. He slit her throat, and he held her there for a few seconds . . . just long enough for me to tell her to look at me and nowhere else and just listen to my voice, and then Sam let go of her hair, and she fell on the ground and kinda moved, so she could see me, and I kept talking to her. I didn’t want her to die alone in a room full of demons and Sam and the spirit of that fucking bitch Rachel laughing in the corner . . . I wanted her to know that I was there and that I knew she was scared, but that was okay . . . that she didn’t have fight it, and her being in that hellhole was almost over . . . that I was proud of her for everything she’d done, and that things were gonna be all right now, and she could let go . . . it was okay to let go.” 

Dean paused and swallowed his emotions down again before he sighed and hung his head. “And damn . . . every other kid that died in my arms . . . I always thought that it was important to hold them, because . . . everyone else in their lives was already dead, and I thought maybe they needed to feel like . . . I don’t know . . . that kind of comfort one more time, but I couldn’t hold her, and then she was gone, and Sam said he just did it to have a little fun with me. I would’ve put a bullet in his head myself if he hadn’t had me nailed to the wall through my wrists, so yeah, I let Beth do that to Sam . . . wanted her to do a lot more than she did to Sam, but she said that underneath the demon blood, there was still something there to save, and we had to do something to try and save it . . . She has a thing about trying to save the light in the universe. Think she sees the universe as kind of like a starry night where everything is dark except for the little bit of light from the stars . . . if someone or something is nothing but dark, she’ll destroy it, but if there’s even a little bit of light in them, she tries to save it, so she can even the scales. That’s why she saved Sam. Sometimes, I still have a hard time looking at him when I wake up from a nightmare about Julie or any of the other things he did, but especially Julie and the other kids I watched die.”


	24. From One Dean to Another Part 2

The Dean from Purgatory came and stood next to Dean before he said, “You say any of this to them?” 

Dean shrugged. “Sam knows how I felt in the Luxor, cause I told him, and Beth knows about that and all the rest, except for what happened with Adam . . . think talking to you is kinda like talking to the mirror . . . one that isn’t broken after I smashed it into a million pieces.” 

The new Dean laughed, and then his smile slowly fell. “I don’t know how to read you as well as I should. All day I’ve been trying to figure out how I ended up like you . . . starting to think maybe I get that, but now I’m wondering how I could do most of the things you’ve done, cause I feel like I’m at the end of my rope, but apparently I’ve got a hell of a lot longer I can go . . . What would you do about my brother?” 

“From personal experience, I can tell you that Sam may say he wants to go out on his own and do his own thing, but as soon as you tell him he can, he’ll turn around and say that’s not what he wants, and he’ll stick around and resent the hell out of you for it. If he thinks he let you down, he’ll blow up the universe to try and make it right. I think that’s why my brother was trying to get your brother moving on finding Kevin and getting you out of Purgatory . . . so he didn’t have anything to feel like he let you down about . . . That’s why we’re here. Sometime in the future, your brother will be dying for some reason . . . think it was supposed to be because he felt like he let you down about Purgatory and to make it up to you, he started doing the trials to close Hell, but if you two stay away from that, it’ll be something else, because that’s how Fate works. 

Anyway, you’ll do something to save him that’s gonna piss him off, and he’ll say he doesn’t want to be brothers anymore. You’ll go with Crowley to find the First Blade, and you’ll end up taking the Mark that makes it work, because who cares what happens to you, right? But then the Mark starts to change you, and Sam doesn’t really care that’s happening, because he’s still pissed, and then you’ll die and become a demon. Then Sam will think ‘oh shit, I let him down,’ and he’ll do all kinds of terrible shit to find you and cure you of being a demon, and then he’ll do everything he has to do to get the Mark off of you, and that’s what lets God’s sister out of her cage. She wants to destroy everything her brother ever created.” 

The new Dean laughed a reluctant laugh and said, “One of you guys finally said why you’re here in a way that makes sense. Think you need to work on your pitch a little more . . . What ‘Mark’ are you talkin’ about?” 

Had none of them really said why they were here yet? Maybe there hadn’t been time in Purgatory, but he thought they’d said something. Maybe they hadn’t. “The Mark of Cain, as in Cain and Abel . . . the Mark is what keeps God’s sister locked in her cage. The person who has it changes. They start to love killing, and I don’t mean the way we kinda like it and don’t really want to admit it because of what it says about us. I mean killing feels like a drug that person is addicted to, so all they can think about is killing to get their next fix . . . The high is even better if you kill using the First Blade, and someone who has the Mark and uses the First Blade can kill anything with it, and you’re stronger than a human and more aggressive, and nothing can really stop you . . . When you die, the Mark won’t let you die, because that cage has to stay shut, so you get brought back as a demon, but not just any demon, a Knight of Hell, and they’re stronger than Alistair, Azazel . . . any of them we’ve faced except maybe Lilith. A Knight of Hell named Abaddon is the reason you get the Mark, so you can use the First Blade to kill her.” Dean had gone over this for years with Beth. He knew about it more than just about anything else she’d said about the future. 

“Great, so you told me. I won’t get it. Why are you still here?” 

Dean smirked a little at the other him being a smart ass. “Because it’s not that easy. Beth told Sam for a year that killing Lilith would let Lucifer out of his cage, and he still did it. Getting the Mark of Cain is your Fate, and Fate is a sneaky bitch that finds other ways of getting you to the same place . . . Like in our last life, we made sure I didn’t have to make a deal to bring Sam back by keeping Sam from dying in the first place, but then the angels got involved and just threw me into Hell a year and 2 months earlier than I should’ve gone there . . . I wasn’t there long enough to break. Gabriel, Cas, Beth, and Sam came to get me out . . . and then Beth and Cas made sure it was over by summoning Lilith and killing her without the angels knowing, so even if the angels decided to send me back to Hell to break that first seal, Lilith wouldn’t be around to be the final seal, and that was checkmate on Fate’s plans for me.” 

The other Dean looked down again and cleared his throat awkwardly. “So, you got sent to Hell twice?” 

“Yeah, we made a move against Fate, and she found another way to get me there. And even though our universe looks nothing like yours, a lot of the bad shit that happened to you still happened to me, like I got turned into a vamp earlier than you did, but I did. Beth only knew a way to find a cure because her Dad let her watch a show about us that let her know all of the things Fate might throw our way. Michael may not have gone into the cage with Lucifer, but Raphael was still a pain in the ass after that was supposed to happen. Cas was a dick to me for a whole year the way yours was, but it’s because he knew it was his Fate to be a dick, and he wanted to use that to try and trick Fate, so he could change what happened with the Purgatory souls . . . Beth did that by making Crowley get the souls from Purgatory instead, so now Crowley is dead, but the Leviathan still got out, and God might’ve put the leader back for us, but I still got sent to Purgatory with your ass. I’d be worried about it, but I know I’ll never take the Mark of Cain. If I get hurt when she does, then she feels all the effects for things, like djinn venom or the diseases Pestilence gave me, so I don’t have to feel them as much or at all . . . even when I went vamp, she could feel what I was feeling, like she was changing too . . . if I got the Mark, she’d probably feel the effects for it, and if I went demon, I don’t know what that’d do to her.” 

The other Dean shook his head again and said, “So, what do we do about me?” 

_Come back with us. We all might be a little off, but we’ll have your back, and I saw how you were in Purgatory. You already miss it. My world is exactly the kind of place you need. It’s where you can be who you really are and actually do some good._

“I don’t know. Think Sam’s better off not hunting. You and I both know our brothers wouldn’t do it if it weren’t for us . . . might be time to let him go his own way, but he has to make that decision on his own, and when he does, make him stick to it. Don’t make him feel like he’s doing anything wrong, even though he’ll still feel like he has and will want to come back . . . You can’t let him come back . . . and I know you don’t do alone very well, so if you want to come with us, you can . . . There’s just the whole dying and going nowhere thing when it’s over to consider, but we already hit rock bottom in our universe, and we’re on the way back up, so it’s not all bad. You could do some real good there.“ 

The tension that had been buzzing off of the other Dean since they got out of Purgatory relaxed a little before he snorted and said, “Hybrids, huh?” 

Dean smiled. “Yeah, they’re pretty awesome . . . I even hunt with one. She joins the girls team when we play football . . . used to even out, cause Cas was on our side. Might have to make him take his grace back before we do that again. They’ve got Meg and Pamela on their side, and Beth cheats all the time. She has Pamela using her psychic crap to know where you’re gonna throw the ball, and Meg fights dirty . . . really dirty, and Beth encourages it. Abbey, the hybrid . . . She’s half-Amazon and half-succubus. Her niece is Lily, the little girl that Rogue punched in the face. She’s not as smart as Rogue, but she’s a good kid, and she didn’t deserve to get punched. She’s just looking for some parents, cause hers are dead, and her aunt doesn’t really know how to raise her, but I might’ve jumped all over Rogue hitting her, cause Lily is half-monster, and I didn’t know what her being punched would make her do. I mean she’s a toddler, so she wouldn’t mean to do anything monstery, but she could . . . mostly she just cried and wanted me hold her . . . and now Beth’s on this whole no hitting thing, cause Rogue punched me . . . I probably deserved it. I was being a dick.” 

The other Dean chose to ignore most of that and focused on the least important thing. “Monster football?” 

Grinning, Dean replied, “More like hunters, prophets, and monster football. We played it on New Year’s Eve. Kevin was on our side . . . so were Bobby and Rufus. It was Ben’s football, so he played, and so did some of the other kids. Not sure if –“ 

Quickly, cutting him off the other Dean said, “Ben, as in Ben Braden? He made it?” 

Crap. Deam forgot this Dean had probably been with Lisa and Ben that year he thought Sam was in the cage. “Yeah, Lisa got attacked by a Croat, and she told him to call Sam or Rachel . . . She thought I was dead and in Hell, I guess, cause Rachel told her that’s where I was going the last time we saw ‘em, and I didn’t know they thought that, so I never told them I came back . . . I still should’ve checked on ‘em at the start of the outbreak, but there was a lot going on, and I forgot. Forgot about a lot of people while Adam and me were out trying to get guns and food and anybody we could find to take back to our camp those first few weeks . . . Had to leave Beth behind here at the cabin. Crowley and his demons did a number on her. But when Ben called 3 weeks after the outbreak, it meant she was there to take the call and went down to Cicero by herself to get him. He’s been with us ever since . . . Great kid . . . Loves knives. He’s one of the leaders at our camp. We couldn’t do what we do without him.” 

“And Lisa? Did she turn or –“ 

“She might’ve gotten infected, but she took herself out before she turned. Ben wouldn’t have made it if she didn’t keep him safe in one of the red zones for as long as she did.” 

The other Dean thought about that and then said, “And Death’s lock up? You’ve been there?” 

Finally, they were getting to the more serious questions. “Yeah, there are these cell blocks that are like open living rooms and everyone can see out . . . saw some guy drinking a beer and watching an old TV from the 50s and some lady of the night from the Victorian era or something and a pot head from the 70s . . . everyone seemed kind of chilled out.” Dean leaned closer and added in a whisper, “And I was thinkin’ about it. God said we can bring people with us, but we have to explain the going nowhere when they die thing to them. Except the way it works with soul mates is you go where the other one does . . . You’re Beth’s soul mate too, maybe not like I am, but you are, and Dad always said if we hadn’t met it wouldn’t be a problem, but since we’d met, she had to stay with us, and that’s why she got to start hunting with us when she was 16.” 

The other Dean stopped him from saying what else he was going to say. “Now I know you’re lyin’. There’s no way Dad let her go with you guys when she was 16.” 

Thinking about it, Dean laughed. “Yeah, I never would’ve thought he would either, but I wouldn’t leave without her, and he got the way he used to get if you questioned him on anything, but then after I started explaining it he backed off and started asking questions, and then after he figured out we were soul mates, he got up and asked for her address while he grabbed his coat . . . wasn’t sure if he thought she was a witch and was going to take care of it or not, but he came back with her a couple of hours later.” 

The other Dean leaned forward on the porch railing and finally started drinking some of his beer before he said, “So what was that like? They get along?” 

Yeah. Now Dean thought that prophecy saying Michael’s vessels would protect her, and she’d protect them had been totally right. It’d been true right down the line, his Dad, him, Adam, and now he guessed, Rogue. “He pushed her hard on training, but she was up for it, and then on the hunts, he let her do whatever she wanted . . . just had two rules. One, she couldn’t intentionally hurt herself, and two she couldn’t cheat on rule one . . . They had this whole game they used to play. I think Dad used to like playing it, but it was a game Gabriel told him he had to play, and said those were the only two rules he could give her . . . Gabriel told him who he was that night Dad went to her house thinking he had to explain to her Dad what soul mates where and what hunters do and how he did it and how she should come with us, cause it was safer for her if she did.” 

The other Dean laughed in disbelief and said he’d have to see it first to believe any of that and then added.“So, you think me meeting Beth could pull me out of going to the lock up?” 

Dean shrugged. “I don’t see why not . . . Might have to become her second best friend though . . . have to beat Cas out of that position. Death said he didn’t want to see her in his lock up again, so he’s not gonna let her go there, and Death said his decision in death is absolute, so yeah, if anyone’s going somewhere other than where they’re supposed to go, it’ll be you, not her. Hey, if you get pulled up to Heaven with us, you can go hang out at the Roadhouse like the rest of us are planning . . . the only thing is that it only works for you and me. Don’t think it’ll work for any Sams we bring with us.” 

The other Dean laughed. “Haven’t decided anything yet . . . so, she really got kicked out of Death’s lock up?” 

Dean finally opened his own beer before answering. “Yeah, and Crowley kicked her out of Hell . . . It’s why Cas had to give her back to me after 3 months.” 

The other Dean laughed again and shook his head. “Anything else I should know about?” 

“Probably a lot of things . . . What do you want to know?” 

“What’s an Amazon like?” 

Dean stopped mid-sip, and looked at the other him. “You never met one?” The other Dean shook his head, so Dean said, “Pretty sure you were supposed to meet one before you went to Purgatory if I’m remembering what I was told right . . . think you were supposed to have a kid with one, but Sam killed her. Must be how you’re different than the main timeline.” Dean’s branch had gone way the fuck off course, but he wondered how many others just had small differences from the main part of the tree, like this guy. If they were all like this guy, then that’d be all right with him.


	25. From One Sam to Another

Sam tried to pretend he wasn’t eavesdropping on the Dean from this universe talking to the Sam from this universe. Apparently, the Dean from this universe wanted to meet Amelia for some reason. What was he up to? Sam glanced at his own brother, who was watching the other Sam and Dean and trying to pretend like he wasn’t. What were they both up to? Ever since the other night, the two Deans had been almost inseparable. Something was going on with them. 

The other Sam seemed confused and wanted to know why Dean wanted to meet her too. This could go wrong fast if the other Dean was genuinely trying to show an interest in getting to know her, and the other Sam refused. It’d come off like he was embarrassed of his brother. Maybe he was, but his brother didn’t need to know that, so Sam said, “I met her. Trust me. You aren’t missing anything if you don’t.” 

The other Sam gave him a bitch face that really annoyed Sam, and the other Dean gave him one too, but it seemed like it was for a different reason, and then when they went back to talking, his Dean threw a dirty old sock at him. What? He gave Dean a look and then looked towards the kitchen to let Dean know he wanted to talk to him, and Dean slumped before he got up to head out there in front of him.

“What are you two up to?” 

Dean went to the fridge to open it out of habit even though there wasn’t much in there, and that’s why Beth and the Cas’s had gone shopping. “What are we doing here, Sam?” 

_Being bored out of our minds while we try to figure out what to do._ “We’re supposed to be stopping the Darkness from being released.” 

Dean closed the fridge before he turned around and leaned back against it. “Exactly. I already told him about the Mark of Cain. He knows he shouldn’t get it. He knows why, but we’re still here. Why is that?” 

“Uhh, it isn’t enough to change Fate?” 

Dean pointed at Sam and said, “Exactly,” before he started to go past him back into the other room, but Sam grabbed his arm to stop him. 

“So, how do we fix that?” 

Dean looked past him to make sure the other Sam couldn’t hear them and said, “We’re gonna split them up. If that Sam doesn’t want to hunt, then he doesn’t have to hunt. Them hunting together is the number one problem we have to fix. If getting Sam out of the game isn’t enough, then we’re sticking around until we’re sure he doesn’t start dying from something that his brother needs to fix, and then we’re bringing the other Me with us.” 

“That’s never going to work. He isn’t going to –“ 

Dean looked around Sam’s shoulder again and quickly said, “Really? Because I think that Sam got along just fine on his own when his brother was in Purgatory. He got used to living the apple pie life, and that’s what he says he wants, so why not let him have it? He did the bare minimum on helping you find Kevin and getting the other Me get out of Purgatory, so he doesn’t have anything to feel bad about . . . Now’s the best time for a clean break.” 

Sam looked back over his shoulder and said, “And the other you is on board with this?” 

Dean shrugged. “Not really, but I’ve been trying to sell our timeline, and I might’ve said it was better for his brother if he let him go do his own thing.” When Sam didn’t say anything, Dean said, “What? It’s the same thing you were saying, but better, cause this way we aren’t separating them by killing the other Sams out there.” 

No, they were just leaving the other Sams behind to do their worst when they realized they’d lost their brother. “He isn’t going to let his brother go that easy, Dean. I know he says it’s what he wants, but it really isn’t.” 

“I know. That’s why we need your help. I’m good, but you speak Sam better than I do. Need you to work on it from that side the way I’m working it from this side.” 

Why was Dean so up for tearing them apart? Is it because deep down, it’s something Dean really thought he and Dean should do? Sam watched Dean for a few seconds and decided that wasn’t it. “You like the other you. You want to bring him with us.” 

Sam didn’t know how he felt about that. One part of him felt like he was being somewhat replaced, and the other part of him thought it was kind of remarkable that the brother who usually hated himself would like another him enough that he wanted to keep him around. Maybe that meant deep down, his brother liked himself a little more than Sam ever thought he did. “Nah, well, I don’t know . . . kinda think maybe he needs us. His brother doesn’t want him. We do. Why not keep him?” 

Sam snorted. “He isn’t a dog, Dean.” Dean started to deny that’s what he meant, and Sam added, “No, I think it’s sweet that you want to look after him. Does he know that’s why you want him to come with us?” Dean opened his mouth to probably call him a name, and Sam said, “I’ll talk to the other me, but he needs to know what you two are planning, and I wouldn’t expect him to let you take his brother without wanting to come too.” 

Dean hesitated and then said, “He can’t . . . None of the Sams can. I think I found a loophole for the other Me with Beth . . . If she’s their soul mate too, then they should go where she goes . . . they won’t go nowhere.” 

“But Chuck said –“ 

“I know what Chuck said, but Death makes the decision on what happens after we die.” 

“So, because Death doesn’t want her back in his lock up, he’ll let them go where she does . . . maybe, but that’s a big maybe, and they’d have to make it back to our timeline and not die in any of the others. You’re taking a gamble on their futures, and what if you bring too many with us, and Death decides he’s missing out on too many souls, so he keeps them and just drops her into the Big Empty? And what if he and Beth have to be closer than they are for that to work?” 

Dean was quiet for a little too long, and finally decided to say, “The other me isn’t looking for anything. They can be friends. Dad said soul mates can be best friends or siblings or what me and Beth are . . . and I won’t bring anymore if he comes with us. This one is the right one.” 

“When was the last time you ever met a man and a woman who could be that close and just be friends?” 

Dean nodded his head in the direction of the living room to indicate the other Dean, and before Sam could argue with that, Dean got an idea and said, “You and Beth are just friends, and you’re close, right?” 

Yeah, but that didn’t count. “She’s family . . . like an older sister and an annoying little sister all wrapped up into one depending on the day.” 

Dean smiled and said, “Exactly . . . that’s what they can be.” 

Sam rolled his eyes. “Yeah, like you could be. How’s that working out anyway?” Dean held his breath for a second, and Sam used the silence to say, “Fix it. The longer you take, the worse it’s going to be, and maybe he and she will get the wrong idea of the parts they’re supposed to play in this grand plan of yours . . . And he’s the right one how exactly?” 

Dean hung his head and said, “He just got out of a place that’s not a hell of a lot different than where we’re from, and he’s a hell of a fighter. He’s still sharp. And he’s the right age.” 

Right age for – “You think he’d be an acceptable replacement for you with Rogue, because she knew the younger you wasn’t you . . . If you think -” 

Dean shook his head and said, “I don’t think she’ll be anyone else’s little girl, but mine, but I think he’ll do the job, like she was his and still make sure that she knows she’s really mine . . . just in case something happens.” 

“What about –“ 

“It’s nothing against you or Cas. It’s just I have a chance to make sure she grows up with me no matter what happens to me. I know he’ll raise her the way I would, or he will once he sees how I do it, and you’ll be there to help him . . . Same with Cas.” 

Sam slumped and gave Dean a single nod to let him know he understood before he gave him a small smile and said, “I guess that’s why I’m here . . . to make sure it doesn’t come to that.” 

Now he just had to make sure he followed through on that. No way was he losing his brother on this mission . . . never really thought this mission would be that dangerous, because so far it’d been easy, but if Dean was making contingency plans on what to do for his daughter if something went wrong, then Sam needed to up his game and make sure Dean got back to their timeline, so Dean could see his daughter grow up himself.

That night they hit a bar in town to keep working on getting along together. The Cas’s stayed at the cabin with Rogue and Kevin, so human Cas could teach angel Cas how to babysit, Sam guessed. He wasn’t entirely sure what was going on there. The Cas's seemed to be getting along better, but it was almost like human Cas was trying to convert angel Cas into being a human the way Dean was trying to convert the other Dean into joining their family and leaving the other Sam behind. 

Dean gave Sam a look and then said something about wanting to see who was better at pool to the other Dean and left Sam there with the other Sam. Guess this was supposed to be his window to talk to the other Sam. “So, uh, are you going to introduce your brother to Amelia?” 

The other Sam glanced at the Dean from this universe and said, “I could. I could actually be spending this time with her. It’s not like we’re actually hunting or doing anything that is even remotely like hunting except for hiding out with Kevin and a bunch of doppelgangers we have to pretend are our twins anytime we’re out in public. But seriously, I think he’s up to something, so I’m reluctant.” 

_What do I value above all else? Honesty._ Sam wanted to be filled in on everything that was happening, because he didn’t need to be protected or shielded from it, and he always hated when his Dad never told them what he was planning. It’s probably what this Sam valued too. Might as well lay it all out there for the other Sam, so the other Sam knew what was going on and what was at stake. It’d make the other Sam feel less betrayed than if his brother just disappeared one day never to be heard from again. And it’d make the other Sam less likely to start trying to find portals to other timelines to try and find him, if something like that was even possible. 

“He is up to something. He’s trying to let you know that it’s okay if you want to go. He just wants to get to know the person you’re going to be with when you do. He’s trying to be supportive.” 

Yeah, this sucked. No wonder Dean left it to him to say all of this “Go? Go where?” Sam gave the other Sam a look that said he knew the other Sam knew exactly what he’d meant. “He’s going to let me stop hunting?” 

Toying with his bottle, Sam said, “It’s what you said you wanted, right?” 

He glanced at the other Sam and recognized that look even though he’d never seen it. He knew what the other Sam was feeling. The other Sam was in something of a freefall he wasn’t expecting. “Well, what’s he going to do, keep hunting without me?” 

Nope. “He wants to stick around long enough to know you aren’t going to get sick the way you were supposed to get if you started doing those trials to seal Hell, and then once he’s sure you’re going to be okay, he’s going to come with us . . . back to our timeline.” 

And that tailspin just got worse. “Without me?” 

Sam looked at his beer bottle again and gave a brief nod. “Yeah. That way he won’t be tempted into asking you to go back into hunting with him.” 

The other Sam looked at his brother again and said, “Why isn’t he telling me this?” 

Peeling some of the label off his beer, Sam answered, “He doesn’t want to influence your decision.” 

The other Sam slumped. “Well, is it because of what I did after he disappeared? I mean, it took a while, but I went with you to find Kevin, and I did find a way to get him out of Purgatory faster. What else does he want?” 

“For you to be happy. To stop putting this universe at risk because of what the two of you are willing to do for each other, because it’s only going to get worse. Purgatory has changed him. He isn’t doing well now that he’s out. He’d fit in better in a world like ours.” 

The other Sam shook his head adamantly. “Who will have his back?” 

It wouldn’t be what the other Sam wanted to hear, but it was the truth. “Dean will. Beth and Cas will. I will.” 

“You will? After what you did to your brother? I don’t think so. Why can’t I come?” 

Sam knew this wouldn’t matter, but he still had to say it. “You could come with us, but if you do, I’m not sure he will, because it means that if you die in our timeline, you’ll go nowhere . . . You might end up in Death’s lock up if you’re lucky, but that’s it. You won’t get to see your parents or Jess or anyone else you’ve lost.” 

The other Sam looked at his brother again and sighed. “And he’s okay with that happening to him?” 

Sam shrugged. “There’s a chance that because of Beth, he might get to Heaven to be with the rest of them if she’s his soul mate, but it’ll be our Heaven, not yours. At least he won’t be alone there.” Before the other Sam could come up with another question, Sam said, “He could be happy there in a way he hasn’t been in a long time here, and I don’t mean because of you. There is a part of him that felt at peace in all of the chaos in Purgatory, and now that he’s out, he can’t find that. In our timeline, he could. He can balance it by teaching kids who are just like him and who’ll look up to him, and who will learn how to survive and become better people because of the example he sets for them. You should give it some serious thought, because I’m pretty sure he is, and it’s not like things would be all that different than they were when you thought he died and wasn’t coming back. If the only reason you want him to stay here is so you can get him on the phone after he’s finished with a hunt, then you should let him go. And to do that, you could start by letting him meet Amelia.”


	26. Match That Ignites Things Into Action

_Here we go. Time to put a jump on things._ “Remember what Mom told you?” 

Rogue nodded up at me. “Mom job.” 

She was learning new words all the time . . . ones she heard all the time anyway, and I guess job was one of those. I smiled. “That’s right. If your Dad asks, say Mom went to do her job.” I gave her my hand to hold, and added, “Be good for Kevin.” She squeezed my hand and nodded, so I said, “I’ll be back even if you aren’t.” 

She nodded again. “Be back.” 

“I will. I promise. Okay, I’d better get going.” 

Standing, I addressed Kevin. “Remember to keep quiet and let her be the one to answer if anyone asks. It’ll buy me more time . . . Anything I should say to your Mom, so she knows I’ve seen you?” 

He handed me a ring. “Show her this. She knows it’s mine. You’re sure you should be doing this alone?” 

Yeah, why wouldn’t I? “Nobody in this universe knows who I am. Crowley’s demons would know to be on the look out for any Sams, Deans, and Castiels. I can walk right up to her house, and they won’t think anything, except that I have a shiny soul.” 

Kevin seemed unsure and said, “And you can get her out and here without anything being able to follow you?” 

“Well, I can if she does what I tell her to do . . . I know she’s the take charge type, so –“

“Just don’t mention the time jumping thing, or she’ll think you’re crazy. She’ll do what you want as long as you look like you know what you’re talking about, and if she knows that it’s what she has to do to keep me safe until she gets here. Then all bets are off.” 

“Good to know. I’ll play it that way. Should only take a couple of days.”

I headed out the window on the second story where the zip line used to be, so I could get out of the house without passing all the doubles down stairs. Scaling down to a level that I could drop from, I landed, and turned . . . damn. “Goin’ somewhere?” 

_Uhhh._

“Mind if I come?” 

_Uhhh._

“I need to talk to someone I don’t know or who doesn’t look like someone I know. It’s either you or Kevin, but you’re the one I think can answer some questions I have.” 

I looked around and didn’t see anyone else, so I looked back up at the ‘not-my-Sam’ and said, “Yeah, okay, but we aren’t going to have as much of a headstart as I was hoping to get.” 

As soon as the Sam from this universe and I found a car to take from a cabin not far from ours, we hit the road, and then he said, “What do you think about what’s going on with everyone else?” 

_What’s going on with everyone else?_ “I’ve been planning my own personal mission for the last couple of days. You’re gonna have to fill me in on what I’ve missed.” 

He changed lanes and said, “Apparently, my brother is planning to come with you back to your timeline, and they think that since you’re soul mates with him, he won’t end up nowhere, but if I go, I will, so they don’t think I should come, and if I do, they think he won’t, but if he goes there, he’ll be happy.” 

_Uhhh._ “Well, it’s a solid plan to keep the Darkness from being released, but once he’s gone, there’s all kinds of damage you could do trying to get him back.” He denied that he would do anything like that, so I said, “You may not want to admit it, but you and my Sam were the same person . . . probably until you were about 13, so anything he’s done, you’re capable of doing, and realizing that you’ve lost your brother is definitely the kind of thing that would set you off . . . Have you talked to your brother about it?” 

He huffed out a soft sigh and shook his head. “No, the other Sam told me when we were out last night.” 

Oh. “I’ve found that the problems start with you and Dean when you stop talking and start doing what you think is right . . . You should talk to him about it. What do you want?” 

Sam glanced at me and said, “What do you mean what do I want? I don’t want to lose my brother.” 

“Well, let’s look at your options, because I don’t think you’ve thought about all of them. You’ve only thought about the ones you’ve been told. If I mention something, and it makes your heart race, your palms sweat, your stomach feel like it’s hitting the floor, like you’re experiencing hearing loss, or like your going numb, it’s probably not something you want, but maybe you don’t know that, or you can’t admit it to yourself, so listen to what your body is telling you. If it doesn’t make you feel like that, then it’s one of your real options. Once you get an idea of what are real options for you, then you can present them to Dean and see if any of them line up with what he wants, and if they don’t, see how you could make them line up.” 

He turned down the road I told him to go down and said he’d give it a try, so I said, “You could go live your life with Amelia, and Dean could keep hunting without you. You’ll see him every so often, and there’s a greater chance he’ll die on a hunt. He may or may not get the Mark of Cain, and if you find out he has, then you’ll be pulled back into hunting, and the Darkness will be released. 

Another option is you go live your life with Amelia, and Dean doesn’t hunt without you. He gives it up and becomes a mechanic. He might be happy, but I don’t think he will be . . . it depends, and I doubt he’d ever really be able to totally give up hunting. You could go live your life without Amelia, because you want out of hunting, but she goes back to her husband, and Dean could keep hunting without you. You could go live your own life without Amelia or hunting, and Dean could not hunt without you. 

You could keep hunting with Dean the way you have been, and you could lose him on a hunt, and then you have to figure out what you’re going to do with your life without him. Do you bring him back? Do you keep hunting? Do you give it up? What would you become without him? I think you know yourself after the last year if that’s a place where you want to be again. 

You could keep hunting with Dean the way you have been, and he could lose you on a hunt, and then he’ll have to figure out what he’s going to do without you. Does he bring you back? Does he keep hunting? Does he give it up? What would he become without you? 

You could go live your life with or without Amelia, and Dean could come with us. You’ll never see him again, and you’ll always wonder what he’s doing, if he’s alive, if he’s happy. Is that easier or harder to think about than the thought of him hunting on his own without you? Why? 

Something nobody has thought about is that if he comes with us, there’s just as much of a chance of him taking the Mark of Cain in our timeline as any of the others, because we haven’t gotten that far in our timeline yet, and the only reason it won’t happen in our timeline, is because my Dean won’t take it. What happens if we bring a Dean back with us who will, because he’s despondent without his brother? We’ll do everything we can to keep your brother from getting it, but what if you’re the only one who can? 

Both of you could come with us, and you could start over, and live your normal life as a teacher in our camp while keeping an eye on your brother when he comes in from being on the road. 

You could come with us and hunt with Dean in our world. 

You could come with us, and leave Dean here. What would he do here without you? Would he still hunt? Would he still get the Mark?” 

“I can’t give it up if I know he’s going to keep hunting. I can’t go with you if I leave him here for the same reason. I can’t let him go with you without me either . . . I don’t care what anyone says. I know him better than anyone, and he won’t be happy there without me. He’ll get reckless. It’s the same reason I’m hearing he would’ve taken that stupid mark. So, I guess, the options for me are we both retire, or we both go with you, because I know we can’t keep hunting if things are just going to keep getting worse until we start killing more people than we save . . . based on the things you guys have said.” 

“Feel better?” 

He smiled and said, “I’d feel better if I knew where we were going.” 

“Now or when you guys die in our universe?”

He laughed and said, “Well, I was talking about now, but now I want to know what you think will happen if we die in your universe.”

Uh, well. “You could go nowhere . . . it depends on how serious God was on that. I was supposed to go nowhere and ended up in Death’s lock up. He said his decisions in Death were absolute . . . even over God’s decisions. He probably wouldn’t send you into the Big Empty, this like black void of nothingness, if you don’t annoy him. His lock up was pretty sweet, and if your brother and I don’t get super close, then maybe you and he will go there together. You could be in cells next to each other and sneak out to hang out with each other. The locks are pretty easy to get past. Uh, there’s also one, I’ve been thinking about . . . when God said what he said about the other people going nowhere . . . I think my Dad was right on some things, but God’s sneaky, and he said something pretty damn close to what I told Joshua to tell Rachel, when she was given the option of joining back up with my part of our soul . . . I don’t know if I’m right, because you guys have different souls, but at the same time, they’re the same souls, so maybe he might merge all the Sams into one . . . Same goes for the other doubles. I mean that’s what God kind of did when he gave us all our memories of our real life back after our trip to re-live our lives. Maybe you’ll remember your life and my Sam’s life and he’ll remember yours and his . . . and you’ll be one person . . . but like I said, I don’t know how that would work . . . I’m just not sure how keen God would be on letting lots of Deans and Sams and Castiels run around in one universe. On the other hand, our universe needs lots of TLC, so maybe that’s exactly what we need, so I’m sticking with the lock up theory for now . . . I could try to sell Death’s lock up more if you can think of anything you want to ask.”

Sam sighed and then said, “Think I need to think about everything first before I’m even close to a stage where I can ask something like that . . . So, where are we going now?”

“Uh, well, I was thinking that I would go get Kevin’s Mom for him. I thought since nobody in this universe has ever seen or heard about me, I could walk right up to her front door without drawing any attention. The demons watching her might think I have a shinier soul than anyone they’ve seen, but they won’t know why I’m there or what I do. They’d know to keep an eye out for anyone who looks like you or Dean or Cas. I figured I could be gone and most of the way back before anyone noticed I was gone, since everyone’s been busy with their own things.” 

“Doesn’t it bother you?” 

“That you hijacked my mission? Not really. It cuts down the amount of time before anyone notices we’re missing, but we can make it work . . . maybe. Might have to toss your phone.” 

He smiled again and said, “No, I mean that they’re planning all these things behind your back?” 

“No, what they’re planning isn’t something I really have any part in. I’m kind of like the match that ignites things.” 

Sam nodded in understanding and said, “Like this little soiree?” 

Exactly. “Yeah, how can we think about any of those things they’re talking about when we still have a job to do here in protecting Kevin? If we get his Mom, we can tell them everything they need to know to stay off the grid and make sure they know not to do something, like go to any witches. Maybe she’ll want to get the tablet as a bargaining chip, but if I see that damn demon tablet, I’m going to smash it and give the pieces to your Cas, so he can throw them into volcanoes. And we can’t forget about Meg. Crowley has her, because she knows where the angel tablet is. But I know where it is too, because that tablet is in the same place in every universe, so I’m smashing it as soon as I get the chance too, and then I’ll find Meg. Then you can cure her being a demon. She’s actually a pretty good human being and a great hunter.” 

Sam took all that in and shifted gears from looking at the big picture to looking at the more immediate picture. “What if we take care of the angel tablet and then go to get Kevin’s Mom? Crowley’s going to know who you are after you get Kevin’s Mom, so if you get rid of a tablet he wants before that, he won’t have any of his demons out looking for a woman with a shiny soul, and we have a better chance of getting rid of it.” 

Yeah, okay. “You might want to turn east the next chance you get then.” 

\------------------------- 

Sam looked down at the mess at his feet and said, “That’s it? You just throw it on the ground, and it doesn’t work?” 

Not quite. “Kevin could put it back together. That’s why I’m going to have Cas drop the pieces into volcanoes, so the clay pieces melt. With this gone, Metatron won’t be able to access the power in it and become powerful enough to walk out of rings of holy fire, like he’s some kind of god.” 

Sam helped me pick up the pieces, so we could take them outside, and I asked if he wanted to pray to Cas to let him know where we were. He did, and Cas was there a few seconds later. “Everyone is looking for you two.” 

Grinning, Sam said, “Tell the other Sam that I just took a page out of his book to get him moving.” 

Cas sighed. “I will when he gets back from going to Kevin’s Mother’s house.” 

Crap. “Uh, I was wondering if you could maybe take these and throw them in some active volcanoes, and then I was wondering if you could maybe take us to Kevin’s house, so we can beat them there.” 

Cas looked at the pieces of tablet in our hands and asked, “Which tablet is this?” 

Truth? What would he do with it? I didn’t know him, so I didn’t know if I should trust him. Naomi hadn’t been able to reprogram him, so he shouldn’t want it for her, but what if he thought it was important to keep for some reason and took off with it, like he did in that show? Sam did trust him, so he’s the one who said, “It’s the angel tablet. Crowley is looking for it. So are Naomi and Metatron. You don’t want them or anyone else to get ahold of it, or they’ll be able to do a lot of damage to you and the other angels. If you throw it into the volcanoes, Kevin can’t put it back together, and it’ll be useless.” 

Cas trusted Sam too, because he took the pieces from us and told us he’d be back when he was done. As soon as Cas was gone, I looked at Sam. “You know everyone keeps talking about you and Dean coming with us, but –“ 

Sam looked at where Cas had been standing and looked like he felt guilty. “What about Cas?” I nodded, so he said, “Dean and I could stay here and retire, and Cas could go with you, or all three of us could go . . . I guess it wouldn’t matter to him one way or the other if he died here or there, because he’ll end up the same either way . . . nowhere, right?” 

“Yeah, and our Heaven needs a lot of work too that my Dad and our Cas don’t have any interest in doing. He could have a fresh start.” Sam said he’d bring it up to him. I wondered what they’d decide to do. We might be going back with none, two, or all three.


	27. Making Decisions Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is from Purgatory Dean's point of view.

Dean watched his brother sneak around one side of the house before Beth came around the other. His brother actually smiled when he saw her and gave her a nod before they came around the front and walked up to the front door. He started to go, and the other Dean told him to wait. “What are they doing?” 

As soon as Beth and Sam went into the house the other Dean and Sam got out to follow them. Guess they were waiting to catch them in the middle of whatever it was his brother and Beth were doing. Getting in the front door was easy enough, and as soon as the other Sam and Dean heard whatever it was his Sam was saying, they gave each other a look, and the other Dean said, “You’re gonna want to see this,” before he pushed Dean around the corner ahead of him. 

Dean got there in time to see the tail end of whatever exorcism his brother was reading off a piece of paper. The demon in Mrs. Tran’s friend flickered a couple of times, and then there was one big flash, and the demon was gone, or Dean assumed it was gone. It hadn’t smoked out, and the woman seemed fine. Taking a step into the kitchen he asked, “What the hell was that?” 

His brother turned with a grin and answered, “This exorcism kills the demons without hurting the meatsuits. I didn’t believe it until I saw it on the ones I tried outside, but it works. We don’t have to kill people anymore to kill the demons.” 

Well, this is the most enthusiastic he’d seen his brother be about hunting in a long time. “Can I?” Sam handed the paper to him. It wasn’t his brother’s handwriting. Could barely read it. Dean glanced at Beth while she showed Mrs. Tran a ring for some reason. He’d thought he knew what they were going to do here, but now he didn’t, so he looked at Sam and said, “Where the hell have you been?” 

Taking a half a step back, Sam’s smile dropped. “We, uh, we got the angel tablet and smashed it, and then we gave the pieces to Cas to throw in some volcanoes. It’s out of play now.” 

Dean looked back over his shoulder when the other Sam said, “If your Cas really got rid of it, that takes Metatron’s threat level down. He could still kick all the angels out of Heaven, but he won’t be able to play god even a little.” 

Dean’s Sam’s smile returned. “Yeah, and even if we stay and Dean gets the Mark, Metatron won’t be able to kill him.” 

_What? That douche is supposed to kill me?_ What was everyone talking about, and how did his brother know about all this crap? Dean glanced in Beth’s direction again before he looked at his brother and said, “Thought you were, I don’t know . . . on your way to Texas.” 

Sam seemed genuinely confused by that. “Why would I take Beth to Texas? I just needed to clear my head. If you still want to meet Amelia, we can go after this if the rest of them take Mrs. Tran to our safe house. Think we have some things we need to talk about.” Okay. If Sam was serious, then Dean was up for that. Hadn’t really thought Sam would want him to meet Amelia.

\-------------------

“So, you’re saying our choices are that we both retire, or we’re both going . . . maybe Cas too? That’s it. What about you retire, and I keep hunting?” Sam shook his head and said that wasn’t an option. The closest Sam thought he could come to being able to do that is going to the other timeline and retiring by teaching at the school if Dean wanted to hunt with the rest of them. “What about we keep hunting here?” 

Sam shook his head again. “Until we lose each other again or until we become the bad guys who kill more people than we save? If we go with them, then there’ll be more of us, and I don’t mean people who will look like us, I mean . . . look, I see the way you are with them. You fit in with them, like they’re family already. It’s more people to have our back and look out for us the way we look out for each other.” Sam had given this some serious thought. 

“What about Amelia?” 

Sam sighed and said, “Her husband’s coming back. I don’t want to get in the way of that . . . but I want to see her again and have her meet you, and then I think I’ll know, but like I said, if we’re staying here, then we’re retiring.” 

That was all on Sam’s terms though. “What about when you die in that universe?” 

Sam got pensive and then said, “I don’t know. I was talking to Beth about it, and she said her room in Death’s lock up was like a replica of her favorite place on Earth with a beanbag sofa and floor lamp and everything set up exactly the way she’d had it. The room was full of books she’d never had a chance to read, but had always wanted to read, and she thought it was because she doesn’t like reading something more than once. Her room had every movie she’d ever heard about or seen and wanted to see again, and it had a record player and all her favorite records. It was fully stocked on her favorite food and drinks and games . . . She didn’t understand why they gave her games, but she thought maybe if they knew all those other things about her, they knew she’d be able to break out and go play her games with other people in other cells, even though Death gave her a hard time for breaking out of her cell to go find the other Dean . . . She had pretty much anything that ever made her happy when she was alive around her . . . Seemed more like Heaven than the Heaven I saw. And if you end up there, then we can make sure we end up together or next to each other . . . wouldn’t be so bad.” 

Huh. “What if I don’t end up there?” Sam shrugged and said, “When has that ever stopped us? Maybe we could make a deal with Death and tell him we’ll send 100 spirits his way if he lets me go with you.” 

Yeah, they could do something like that, or give it a try. “What about the things we have to do to make sure this place is in good shape before we go?” 

“We can do what we can, but how many of the problems we have to fix are because we’re here?” Hadn’t thought about that. Dean needed to find out what those things were. Were he and Sam seriously considering this? Sam glanced at him and added, “And I kind of feel like they’re our responsibility. They’re us, so it’s our job to keep an eye on them and smack some sense into them when they lose it, because they’ve lost it . . . a lot, but it’s not just them. It’s the rest of the Sam and Dean Winchesters out there that they’re trying to fix. They aren’t going to be able to relate to all of them, because they’ve gone so far off the reservation, and maybe we will, because we haven't.” Hadn’t thought of that either. It almost seemed like Sam was trying to talk him into this.

“What the hell happened to you?” Sam ran away from home for a couple of days, and he’d come back a different brother, one like the brother Dean used to know. 

“I guess maybe I realized that I need a change, because I can’t keep going the way we have been. This seems like the kind of change I need, and sure, there are some problems with it, like not knowing where we’ll end up when we die, but we don’t know where we’re going now. We could still end up nowhere here. And we’ll be living in a place that doesn’t have electricity until they can get it back up and running again, but to be at the ground floor of starting all over again and making a positive impact on people’s lives just by waking up in the morning is worth it. If there weren’t problems with it, I’d think it was too good to be true, so it’s probably a good thing that it’s not.” 

Dean laughed, and when Sam looked at him, said, “Man, she really did a number on you. You wouldn’t have been saying all of this before you ran off with her to go smash up tablets.” 

Sam didn’t take the bait and shrugged. “She was already going. I just asked if I could tag along with her. I thought she’d have some insight I wasn’t getting from anybody else.” 

“How’d you know she was going to take off? And how’d you know that when she did, she wasn’t doing it to get some attention?” 

Sam’s forehead furrowed. “You mean like attention seeking behavior? I don’t think so. Nobody’s been paying attention to her, because she wanted it that way. She made herself as unnoticeable as possible this last week, so everyone would forget about her. It was part of her strategy, so she could leave without anyone noticing . . . I’m just the only one who was paying attention and saw that she was planning something, and I didn’t really care that she was until the other Sam told me what you and the other Dean were planning. Then I thought maybe she might have answers I needed to hear, and if I caught her on her own, she might give them to me.” 

That whole running away thing was weird. “Why would she do that?” 

Sam smiled and said, “Honestly, I think she needs to create chaos all around her, because that’s what her mind is like, and it wears her down, but she has to get it out somehow. And I think the other Dean thrives on that chaos she creates. She seems to think she’s the match that ignites the rest of them into doing something, and they were taking too long to get moving, so she took things into her own hands, but I think she knew her family wouldn’t be mad with her for doing it. And if you notice neither one of them gave her a hard time when they finally did catch up to her. I think the reason they even showed up was mostly because they wanted to see what she was up to . . . And I think the other Sam took a page out of her book when he taserd me and threw me in the trunk to get me moving, because I think that’s something she would do, not something I would do.” 

“What’s your take on all of them?” 

Sam was quiet for a few seconds, while he chose his words. “Uh, well, that’s what I think about her. If their lives are a hurricane, she’s like a tornado inside of that hurricane that takes their mind off of the rest of the bad weather, because it creates a more dangerous situation they need to do something about immediately. She’s really positive even after everything they’ve been through, and she knows how to make a negative seem like a positive. If you were just talking to her, you’d never think she could be a hunter. Somehow she’s retained her innocence and doesn’t have the look of a killer. I haven’t seen her hunt, but I’m assuming she’s good, because I think maybe it’s kind of the way she doesn’t seem like a Mom until she gets around her daughter, and then she acts like a really good Mom who is trying to engage her daughter with toys that improve fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, creativity, and memory . . . until you start listening to what she’s saying . . . have you listened to her stories?” 

Dean shook his head, and Sam laughed. “She tells her hunting stories, and she makes them as bloody as possible. Her daughter doesn’t really understand what she’s saying, and I think she knows that, but you can tell she’s told these stories to her a lot, because her daughter says things, like ‘bus’ when Beth’s talking about Cerebus, and you just know that when Rogue gets old enough to start drawing pictures of her family, she’ll have their two dogs in there, but she’ll probably have a three-headed dog in there too, because Beth makes Cerebus sound like her pet.”

It sounded like Sam had been paying a lot of attention to Beth. “What about the others?” 

Sighing, Sam relaxed against the passenger side door. “The human Cas is really strong-willed. It’s like after billions of years being told what to do, he refuses to be shackled by anything anymore. He sees it as his job to be the family caretaker . . . even more than our Cas does. And he really hates angels. I mean, I thought I didn’t like the way I am sometimes, but he took it to the next level, and maybe he’s better for having done that . . . He seems happy. I think that’s why he wants our Cas to not be an angel. He totally severed ties with angels, so he doesn't feel that pull between 2 families the way our Cas does . . . except when it comes to Gabriel. The way he talks about Gabriel is the way I talk about you, I think . . . He really sees him as a big brother. That’s not something our Cas would’ve ever thought about any of the archangels . . . he might’ve called them brother and vice versa, but I don’t think he knew what that kind of a bond felt like.” 

Maybe Dean needed to hang out with that Cas more. He just found it a little hard to get past all his bitching at his Cas, but if there was more to it, something, like that Cas wanting their Cas to be happy or not feel so guilty about killing off Heaven, then maybe he was okay. “What about the other you?”

Sam rolled his eyes and said, “I think he’s . . . weak? He didn’t seem like he was when it was just the two of us and the rest of you were in Purgatory, but as soon as his brother showed up, his entire demeanor changed. I don’t know which one is the real him. Is he putting on an act in front of his brother, or has he tied his entire moral compass to what he thinks his brother wants him to do, because he really has no idea what the difference between right and wrong are anymore? 

You didn’t see the way he talked about shooting Jo in the head. He didn't do it to spare her torment with Lucifer or anything noble. He just didn't want Lucifer to use her to force him into being his vessel, because he didn’t want to go in the cage. And the way he talked about taking over Vegas . . . He went into the city with his demons and acted like the city's savior who could rid them of Croats. Then after the Croats were gone, he had the people wall themselves into the city under the pretense of protecting them from more Croats. After there was no way out for those people, he had his demons signal to the demons without meat suits that they were having a fire sale on meat suits, but they couldn’t possess the kids, because he had other plans for them, and then the way he described the way he had his demons section off the city and set up raiding parties to go find more humans to bring back to his prison camp . . . there was no emotion there at all. 

The way he talked about it was really cold and like it was no big deal, because it was in the past. I know he loves his brother, and he’s trying to do the right thing with the kids they’re taking care of now, but . . . how much of that is really him, and how much of that is because he thinks it’s what he’s supposed to do? There’s a difference. One you don’t have to think about because taking care of kids who need it should come naturally, and the other is like an act you force yourself to do until you believe it.” 

Okay, so the jury was still out on the other Sam. “What about the other me?”

“The other Dean . . . I don’t know if it’s because he looks like you, but I kind of feel like I have to protect him. I think he’s lost and kind of going through the motions, and I think he’s lost, because he needs Beth. Somewhere along the way he transferred whatever it is that tethers you to me to her. He had to. He couldn’t keep it tethered to his brother. She’s his rock, and since he cut himself loose from her, he’s been drifting, and it makes him dangerous to himself, to her, and to everybody else.” 

Dean scoffed at that. “So, you think I’m dangerous without you?” 

“Yeah, I do. Why else are they here?” Couldn’t really argue with that, and then Sam followed it up by saying, “But I’m not any better. I think we need each other to keep one another human . . . but the other Dean and Beth . . . I’m not really sure I understand their dynamic yet, because we haven’t really had a chance to see it . . . and I don’t really think it’s like ours. She may be his rock, but she’s also a tornado . . . think sometimes that’s why it’s hard for him to hold on and not get thrown off and maybe why it’s hard for him to reconnect. Be glad you have me.” 

Yeah, Dean was glad he had Sam if Sam really wanted to come back and meant everything he’d said. He needed more than words though. He needed to see it put out there in actions. He wasn’t going to get his hopes up just yet, because they hadn’t seen Amelia yet, and after they did, he could be getting an entirely different brother who insisted they had to stay here and both retire. The problem with that is that maybe Sam had kind of sold him on going to the other universe, because he hadn’t been sure about going before they had this talk. Now he thought maybe he was.


	28. Interview and Signing on the Dotted Line

“Wait, so you three are going to counsel us . . . like therapy?” 

Sam looked over at Beth from his spot on the couch in the other room and laughed when she groaned as the other Sam said he thought it was a good idea. This should be interesting. He’d pay money to see how this went, but as luck would have it, it was free as long as he didn’t draw any attention to himself. Good thing Rogue was down for her nap, or he’d have to find a way to keep her quiet. 

Beth looked like she was getting prepared to be interrogated and gave the other Sam, Dean, and Cas a little smirk, and said, “Let’s see what you’ve got,” before she slouched back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. Blatant look of disinterest firmly planted on her face . . . She was set. Sam couldn’t see Dean from where he was. How Dean was sitting depended on how Dean wanted to play this. Dean could be sitting forward with his elbows on the table and a cocky look on his face if he wanted to annoy them until they left. Dean might fall back into a similar position to the one Beth had if he wanted to see where this was going without having to give anything away. If Dean was in a bad mood, he probably looked like it and wouldn’t say much of anything, but was putting up with this, since apparently it was one of the other team’s conditions for maybe coming with them . . . depending on how this went. Cas’s back was to Sam, but Cas mostly seemed confused from what Sam could tell. Sam had no idea what the other Cas was doing. He couldn’t see him at all and didn’t know him well enough to guess.

The other Sam seemed a little confused by Beth’s change in demeanor, and decided maybe not to start with her. Instead he looked at Cas and said, “Uh, Cas . . . maybe you could start. Maybe you could tell us why you’re still human.” 

“I no longer have my grace. That is why I’m still human.” 

Sam almost laughed when Beth gave Cas an almost imperceptible look to let Cas know he’d done a good job. Cas wasn’t nearly as literal as he used to be. He was learning, and probably not too far off of how Beth was when Sam first met her when it came to these kinds of things. Cas could definitely play dumb better than he used to be able to play it. 

The other Cas, who was standing behind Beth and watching Cas said, “He knew what you meant. He is being coy.” 

Cas looked over Beth’s head at the other Cas and said something in Enochian. The other Cas seemed more than a little annoyed by it, and the other Sam and Dean wanted to know what he said, but before the other Cas could say anything Beth said, “He told him that if he’s going to be here, he should stay silent, because what you’re trying to do requires us to only say what we’re willing to say in front of the others, not have it exposed to everyone if we’re unwilling to do that. Then he called him a goat sucker.” 

The other Dean laughed, and the other Sam looked at angel-Cas. “Thanks for trying to help, Cas, but he might have a point about not saying what they’re thinking. Saying what they’re comfortable saying, and the others listening to them is an important part of it.” Then the other Sam focused his attention back on human-Cas. “Why does Beth still have your grace, Cas?” 

Cas sat back and said, “Because she won’t get rid of it.” This was the first Sam was hearing about Beth having Cas’s grace. If Cas hadn’t known, he and Beth were both playing it, like he did . . . Beth flicked a glance in Sam’s direction. She knew Sam was eavesdropping and wanted him to know she hadn’t told anyone that . . . except maybe the other Dean . . . that made Sam feel a little better about it. Why would she have told the other Dean and not any of them? Maybe she'd used it as a prop to prove something . . . something like what they said about their other life was true. Sam kept his eyes on the jerk Sam and Dean after that. Jerk Dean didn’t look like he’d expected Jerk Sam to say that, so maybe this counseling session would end up being about them.

Jerk Sam decided to change tactics and ignored the look Jerk Dean was giving him. “Why do you think she won’t get rid of it?” 

Cas sighed before he looked at Beth, appraised her in a couple of seconds and said, “She thinks I might want it back some day.” 

Jerk Sam looked at Beth and then back at Cas before saying, “She knows you pretty well?” 

“Why am I the only one being asked questions?” 

Beth answered Cas’s question. “Because he thinks you are the weak-link, Cas. How does that make you feel?” Sam heard his Dean snort. Based on that, Sam would say that Dean was probably somewhere between being cocky and doing what Beth was doing. 

Jerk Sam looked annoyed by it.“Why are you fighting us on this?” 

Beth looked up at Jerk Sam and replied, “Why are you pushing this?” 

“Why are you being so childish?” 

Beth smirked again and asked, “Why are you falling for it?” 

Jerk Sam stopped short and blinked a couple of times before he took a few steps back to survey the group again and try to think of another approach that might work. “Cas, why don’t you want to be an angel?” Cas decided to stonewall that question, and the other Sam said, “I thought it was because of what happened when you tried to help her, and saw what –“

Beth interrupted him. “Well, if everyone here knows the answers to all these questions, why should we answer any of them? If you two want to be in the know on every gory detail of our lives, then just ask us instead of putting on some kind of a charade. We may or may not tell you what you want to know, but don’t pretend this is for us and not you.” 

The other Sam leaned on the table to be closer to Beth and said, “What I see is you not wanting to hear what Cas has to say about that decision, so you’re jumping in and deflecting attention away from it before he has a chance to answer. You’re selfish. He’s completely ignored and –“

Cas stepped in on her behalf. “I am not ignored. We were all drifters without a home long before we started this mission, and it has taken its toll. That is what you see, but that does not mean that we are not family. Me being an angel doesn’t change that we’re family, because an angel is what I am, it’s not who I am, and I don’t have to change who I am to be in their family, but I don’t have to be an angel to be in their family either.”

 _Nice save, Cas._ Jerk Sam quickly seized on it. “Then why don’t you want to be an angel?” 

Cas looked Jerk Sam in the eye and said, “When you met your Castiel, was he as he is now, or was he a dick with wings, because I know I was, and that is not who I am. It is who I was made to be through reprogramming. I was reprogrammed every time I did something they did not like, and it did not start when I met Dean. It has been happening for millions of years. You saw for yourself what happens to your Castiel when he is reprogrammed. He tricked Dean into signing himself over to be a servant of Heaven, released you from your detox program, and took Dean to Zachariah, so that Dean could not stop you from killing Lilith. That is not who he is. That is who he was forced to be. Naomi would be reprograming him as we speak if we had left him behind in Purgatory, and he would have been forced to do things he does not want to do. As a human, my memories may be altered or removed, but who I am cannot be changed. There are things that I can do as an angel that I cannot do as a human, but I have seen what my family is able to do, and they are not angels. It is as I always tell Beth during our training. It is about skill, not power.” 

Sam smiled at that. He thought maybe that was something everyone in this family had needed to hear. He knew it meant a lot for him to hear it. 

“Are we done here?” 

Jerk Sam went to tell Cas, “No,” and Jerk Dean nodded towards the living room and said, “You are . . . go teach our Cas how to play poker without cheating.” 

Cas got up, and Jerk Dean took his seat. Jerk Dean looked like he was enjoying this. Sam wondered how much Jerk Dean actually knew, because he was sure Dean had been talking to Jerk Dean, and Beth probably had been too. This should be good.

Jerk Dean's interrogation didn’t start the way Sam had thought it would. “I’ll give you two this much. You’ve got your Cas trained to say the right things. Gives us just enough not to ask too many questions, hits all the right notes on family, so we don’t want to . . . What do you get out of this, Beth?” 

Didn’t look like it started the way Beth thought it would either, because she didn’t have a quick answer . . . although to be honest, Sam understood her confusion this time. He didn’t know what Jerk Dean was asking either, even after Jerk Dean elaborated a little more. “We’re just talking here, right? We’ve got questions. You said you’d answer ‘em . . . So, I wanna know what you get out of this life? What do you get out of doing this mission you’re on? What gets you up in the morning?” 

_Where is he going with this?_ Beth didn’t look like she knew where this was going either, so she decided not to say anything, and Jerk Dean said, “Okay, well, how bout this . . . You could read a book you really want to read, or you could go on a hunt, but you can only do one, and you’ve gotta do it for yourself, not somebody else . . . which one is it?” 

Sam heard his brother say, “Is this a date? You can do better than that.” Maybe this was tactic to get Dean to open up? 

“I wanna know why she’s a hunter.” 

Dean fired back with, “She doesn’t know anything else.” That wasn’t exactly true, but the other Dean already seemed to know that. 

“Nah, she was a scientist, or she almost was. Why isn’t she one now?” 

Sam heard his brother say in a relaxed manner, “Who says she isn’t? She’s got people working on making medicine in the Colorado camp. We’ve almost died trying to get her laboratory crap. And right now, she’s the closest thing to a doctor we’ve got left in all 5 camps.” 

Jerk Dean said, “So, why isn’t that all she does? She has to have a reason.” Looking back over at Beth, Jerk Dean said, “Come on, it isnt’ that hard. She likes saving people? She likes killing monsters? Or does she do it because of you?” 

_Uhhh, don’t answer that._

“It ticks all the boxes.” If anything would get Beth to answer, of course it would be accusing Dean of dragging her into this life. “I can use all the things I read in Heaven for a purpose. Breaking and entering skills are a requirement. I tried international thief. I did it for free, and it was still too self-gratifying to really be enjoyable. I have to use my brain. I love my HK P30 and sniper rifle, but not as much as my angel blade. I hate axes, and I don’t like knives, except for my lucky silver knife, and I’ll never throw it. I don’t particularly care one way or the other about killing. It’s something that has to be done, so I do it. I like saving people, but then I like leaving as soon as I have, because I don’t particularly like people in the long term, except for my family, the kids at the camp, and about 15 hunters. As for why I’m doing this mission, I owe it to God. I made a deal, and He may have extended the terms of it after the fact, but what He did for me means enough to me that I was never going to turn it down even though I find Him annoying. I don’t really know what gets me up in the morning. I mostly put one foot in front of the other and go wherever my feet take me. If it’s a book or a hunt, it’s a hunt hands down, because I crave excitement. It makes me feel calm. Reading is my safe place, but only if I can find the right place to go. Has to be comfortable, secluded, colorful, protected on 3 sides, and small . . . None of that is really all that interesting. What is it that you really want to know?” 

“If we’re going to do this, we want –“ 

Beth stopped Jerk Sam by saying, “If you two are at the stage where you’re giving the only person you don’t know an interview, then that means you’re closer to deciding than I thought you were. You need to hold off on saying anything else until my Dad comes back, or I’m going to banish you if we end up somewhere else without him.” 

Jerk Sam immediately said, “I said I’m sorry. What else –“ 

Beth turned a slight glare on Jerk Sam and cut him off again. “What else do I want? I want my Dad back. I am sick and tired of you Winchesters banishing him when he’s inconvenient.” 

Jerk Sam looked at Dean for an explanation, and Sam heard Dean say, “Yeah, right now the only one of us who hasn’t is your brother.” 

Jerk Dean said, “So, Gabriel being here a deal breaker, or . . . “ 

Beth quickly leaned forward and said in a quiet, controlled, and what Sam would say was an intimidating way, “He’s my Dad. We’re not leaving without him.” 

Jerk Dean laughed. “I still don’t see –“

Dean cut in. “He’s family . . . for all of us. He’s Cas’s big brother. He keeps Sam in line. He’s Rogue’s grandfather. I know he’s got my back . . . He’s the kind of Dad I want to be, but probably never will be.” 

Sam watched Jerk Dean slump marginally before nodding to let them know he’d let it go, but before anyone else said anything, Sam heard Gabriel’s voice. “Don’t sell yourself short, Dean.” A second later the other Sam disappeared. 

Sam got up to see where Gabriel was. Rounding the corner of the kitchen, he saw that Gabriel was standing directly behind Dean, but Jerk Dean had gotten to his feet too. “What the hell did you do with Sam?” 

Looking at Jerk Dean, Gabriel waved it off. “Relax. He’s cooling off in the lake. I ended up in an ocean. Thought it was fair . . . Still sure you two want to come with us?” 

Jerk Dean shouted, “What the hell else are we gonna do? Stay here and retire? It’s –“ 

That’s all Sam got to hear, because that’s when he unexpectedly found himself standing in the middle of a street holding Rogue. Was she going to be sent with him every time they did this? Sam looked to his left when he felt someone standing there. It was an incredibly freaked out Dean with wild eyes. “Where’d he send us?” 

Sam looked around and saw a soggy Sam standing on the other side of him. “This isn’t Gabriel. This is Chuck. We jumped. Guess there’s no going back now.”


	29. It's Complicated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Ballroom Blitz directly lifted in places.

Purgatory Dean gave Sam a weird look. “Chuck?” 

Guess the cat was out of the bag now. Might as well admit it. “Yeah, Chuck Shurley is God.” 

The newest members of our team looked at each other and then back at me before Purgatory Dean took a step in my direction. “Chuck Shurley? You mean the geeky writer? He’s God?” 

I shook off the last of my nerves from ending up in the middle of a street in the dark in some small town in America and said, “Yeah . . . He’s been living with us in our camp as Chuck since the outbreak. He didn’t decide to let me remember who he was until I asked for all my memories back in our do-over life. He didn’t let the rest of them know until he asked them about going on the training mission, and then he wouldn’t let them remember that until after they were ready to meet with him over doing this mission.” 

Purgatory Dean shook his head. “No, he’s a prophet. He-“ 

“Who was with Cas when Raphael made him explode after Cas sent you to try and stop Sam from killing Lilith? Whom did you go to when you needed to find out where the showdown between Lucifer and Michael was?” It looked like this one was going to take a while to sink in. He looked confused, and like he was trying to go back through those events to see if I might be right, so I said, “Who told you he was a god when you met him . . . you know, before you tried to convince him he wasn’t.” At that Purgatory Dean gave me an annoyed look, I knew pretty well before he looked at his brother, and his brother . . . well, his brother didn’t look annoyed. He mostly looked like he was concerned about being drenched. 

Looking around at our group, it didn’t look like we were missing anybody. Two Castiels, two Deans, two Sams, one daughter, one archangel . . . it was hard enough to hide the bizzarness of this in the last timeline, but what were we going to do with three Sams, Castiels, and Deans? 

My Sam decided to get things back on track. He glanced up and down the street and said, “Any ideas on where we are or why we might be here?” 

Well, there was an American flag flying from a pole further down the block. I checked my watch, and it was about 8 pm and dark. “All I know is that we’re in the States, and it’s not summer . . . uh, we all showed up here and facing that bar. Maybe that’s where we’re supposed to go?” 

The other Sam . . . I had to come up with better names for him, his brother, and angel if they were going to be with us from now on . . . Purgatory Sam? Purgatory Sam said, “Maybe you should go in alone. If any duplicates of us are in there, and we go in there with you, it may cause problems right off the bat. Gabriel can’t go for the same reason.” 

Yeah, but Rogue and I weren’t going to be the only ones who’d never been in these other timelines were we? Looking at me, Dad said, “I wouldn’t be too sure. You’re pretty rare, kiddo. Rogue is one of a kind.” I nodded to accept his assessment and then looked at the bar again. “Okay. I’m going in.” I walked past everyone, so I could get the ball rolling. They could work out how long was too long for me to be in there and what to do about it if I was. 

Walking in the main entrance, I scanned the place. There was an exit to my left by the toilets and another one straight ahead out the other side of the bar. The main bar was to my left. There wasn’t a big crowd. There were a few people at the back, couple of guys playing darts, a few more playing pool. Free booth at the back where I could keep an eye on the room, and it happened to be directly behind one Dean Winchester sitting at the bar alone. 

_Go grab a drink and see if you can tell which one he is. What am I even in the mood for here? It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon a few minutes ago. Don’t feel like going with straight vodka. Hate tequila, and not a fan of whiskey straight. This place won’t do cocktails. I could get a beer, but I need to order something that’ll make an impression._

I glanced at the fridge behind the bar. That worked. “Uh, yeah, can I have your bottle of Grey Goose that’s on ice and 3 cans of Red Bull.” The bartender paused, and said the bottle was almost full. I made a point to look past him at the fridge and said, “I can see that,” before I slapped a $100 on the counter, and he turned to grab my order. 

“So, are you here alone, or is that all for you?” I looked to my right at Dean and almost laughed. I knew that look. He was trying to pick me up. I guess I made an impression. 

Flashing him a smile, I said, “I think you can do better than that,” before I glanced at the bartender when he put the vodka and Red Bull on the counter. Might as well answer Dean's question without answering it directly. “One glass.” 

The bartender put the glass on the counter next to the rest, so I grabbed my stuff and told him to keep the change before I flashed Dean another smile and headed to the booth at the back. When I got there, I took a seat with my back to the wall, so I could keep an eye on things and glanced in Dean’s direction. He was thinking about coming over, but he’d leave it a little longer, so he didn’t seem desperate and not long enough for me to forget about him and make him seem desperate in another way. It’d give me time to try and figure out why we were here. If I couldn’t figure it out before that, I’d figure it out when I talked to him. But first I had to do something about what was playing on the jukebox.

“You don’t want that one.” _Damn._

I looked at the guy who said that and said, “How do you know which one I want?” 

I didn’t say it to be flirty, but apparently that didn’t matter. He tried again and kept trying until I finally told him I wasn’t interested in the nicest way possible. He wasn’t disrespectful and overall was fairly pleasant about it. As soon as he was gone, I looked back over my shoulder to see what Dean was up to and saw Crowley sitting next to him at the bar. I looked back down at the jukebox and knew what it had to be. I put on Ballroom Blitz by Sweet and turned back around. 

Dean’s attention was on Crowley. Crowley’s attention was on Dean. That worked to my advantage. Now I just had to time it right.

_”Are you ready Steve? Uh huh . . . Andy? Uh huh . . . “_

Beth? Almost . . .

_”All right Fellas, let’s go . . . It’s been getting so hard, living with the things you do to me. Uh huh . . . My dreams are getting so strange. I could tell you everything I see.”_

Wait for it . . . Go.

_”Oh! I see a man in the back – as a matter of fact, his eyes are as red as the sun.”_ I thought that part suited Crowley to the tee. 

_”And the girl in the corner, let no one ignore her . . . “_ I got to Crowley in his blind spot and tapped on his shoulder. When he turned, _”Oh, yeah, it was like lightning.”_ Crowley was temporarily blinded after unexpectedly getting a look at my soul up close. He reeled back and put his forearm over his eyes to shield them. _”Everybody was frightening.”_ Grabbing ahold of the front of his shirt, I then pushed him back over the stool, while making it look like I was helping him to the ground and yelled for the bartender to call 911. Before Crowley even hit the ground, I’d started the exorcism to kill him. I had to be fast if I didn’t want him to teleport out of there. Now he was mine . . . and fuck yeah, I timed that just right.

I got to the point in the exorcism when he started flashing, and Dean finally decided to get involved. He got next to me to pretend like he was helping and instead put a knife he had inside his jacket into my side and asked what the hell I was doing. He was good. We had a bit of a crowd, and none of them could see what he was doing. _What should I do?_ I was in the middle of an exorcism. I couldn’t stop and answer him, or Crowley’d get away. Dean wouldn’t stab me here in front of everyone, so I said another line, and Crowely flickered again. 

“Exorcism?” I nodded, so Dean said, “That won’t work on him. He’s got bindings on his body to keep him in there.” I ignored him and kept doing chest compressions while I did another line, and Crowley flickered again. “Why’s he flickering?” It was almost to the part in the song where it says, _”She could kill you with the wink of an eye,”_ so I stopped pretending to do CPR momentarily, looked Dean in the eye and winked when it said it in the song . . . and then I let my eyes linger on his another couple of seconds to make sure he got it.

A lot happened in those couple of seconds. Dean paused and I could smell the whiskey on his breath when he exhaled, but I also got a hint of what he was feeling, and I guess whatever he hadn’t expected to feel at being that close to me . . . I was probably expecting that even less. That hadn’t happened with Purgatory Dean. Maybe I hadn’t been this close to him, but it still hadn’t happened, and not only that, but I hadn’t let myself feel what my Dean had felt since he broke up with me. I guess I really wanted to know which Dean this was, and now I did. This Dean was about the same age as my Dean, so there was really only one thing that could’ve been making him feel the way he did right now. _Are we in the future in this universe?_ I’d kind of thought we were doing this at the same point in time we’d been in, in our timeline, meaning roughly when Dean was in Purgatory. 

Dean took his knife away from my side and said, “You’re killing him?” I nodded again, and he said, “Can’t do it here. Too many eyes.” 

_Oh come on! Every time I want to kill this dickhead, there is a reason I can’t. The last time he died, God and the Leviathan did it._

A slow grin grew on Dean’s face before he said, “Look, I get it. I do . . . Is he gonna get much brighter than this?” I looked at Crowley and nodded, so Dean said, “Then you can’t do it. You’ve gotta let him go.” I glanced towards the exit at the back, and Dean smiled again, “You already told them he was dying. Think they might think it’s a little weird for us to carry him outside.” 

_Damnit!_ We could say we were taking him out there to wait for the ambulance. I tried one more time with I look that I hoped said, “Please,” and Dean breathed out a laugh. “No.” He looked at the people around us and said, “Let him go . . . You can teach it to me, and if he can’t take a hint after this, I’ll hit him with it the next time I see him.” 

“Oh for fuck’s sake . . . fine.” I looked down at Crowley and added in a whisper, “Better make this look good, jerk off, or I’m starting all over again,” before I huffed out a sigh and said to the people standing around, “I think he’s gonna make it.” I ignored their enthusiastic response to that and got back to my feet while Dean helped Crowley to his. Then I turned to go. I knew why we were here. I interrupted the meeting and maybe delayed it. We needed to come up with a plan to – “Hey, where are you goin’?” 

Dean was suddenly blocking my path and said, “You can’t just do what you did and take off like that. I don’t even know your name.” 

No, I guess I hadn’t told him. I should probably refrain from letting him know I knew his name to be on the safe side. “I’m Beth . . . Uh, I don’t really think it’s a good idea if I stick around. I doubt Crowley is really going to be in the mood to have me here, and you and he were –“ 

“Whoa. There is no me and Crowley. He was just telling me about . . . I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Look, I’ll get rid of him, and then you can tell me how you did that. Thought you teaching it to me was part of the deal anyway.” 

I glanced back over my shoulder at Crowley, and if looks could kill . . . There went me not being a target because no one knew me in this timeline. “Think I’ll be busy checking wherever I sleep tonight for hex bags.” 

I turned back to look at Dean, and there was a brief flicker of player Dean and then he decided to dial whatever he was thinking back a bit. “You want me to kill him?” 

_What?_ “That’s what I just tried to do, and you told me not to do it.” 

Dean grinned and said, “If it’s what I’ve gotta do to get you to stay, I’ll go do it right now. Even let you pick the song.” 

_He caught that did he?_

I smiled and he said, “So, you’ll stick around?” 

I sighed. “Yeah, but you don’t have to kill him right now in front of all these people. Might make teaching you that exorcism a little harder if we’re on the run.” 

\------------------

Dean looked down at the napkin I’d given him and said, “So, this it? All I have to do is read this, and they die?” 

Looking over his arm at the napkin to make sure that it was right, I slowly nodded when I got to the end. “Yeah, and if the meat suits are alive, it leaves them that way.” 

“Works on any demon?” 

In every timeline I’d used it in so far. “I haven’t had it fail me yet. It works on demons that aren’t in a meat suit too.” 

I glanced at Dean, and he shook his head before he said it sounded too good to be true. “You saw what was happening to Crowley. He would’ve flickered the way he was a couple more times, and then there would’ve been a big flash of light at the end. No more Crowley.” 

“Where’d you find this?” 

“I’ve been around.” 

Dean smiled and said, “Yeah, about that. Why haven’t I run into you before?” 

_I haven’t been here?_ “It’s a big universe.” 

“What’s your favorite monster to hunt?” 

_What? A hunter test?_ I couldn’t say hybrids, because they didn’t have those here. If it were a normal monster, there was really only one that I’d consider a favorite. “Okami . . . They’re more of a challenge because you have to stab them 7 times. I’m awful at throwing knives, so I made some bolts out of bamboo and had a Shinto priest bless them, and they work fine. I did get killed by one though, but I’m blaming that on drowning more than the okami.” 

He didn’t look like he believed that and ended up smiling. “Yeah? What brought you back?” 

_My Dean._ “Somebody made a deal with Death to bring me back.” 

He looked a little more interested and said, “Death? Why would he let you go? He’s got this whole thing about the natural order and what’s dead should stay dead.” 

I shrugged and answered, “It wasn’t actually supposed to be my time, and he wanted something else more than he wanted me.” Dean wanted to know what he wanted, so I said, “There was a tablet God’s scribe wrote about everything you’d ever want to know about Death. He wanted it destroyed.” 

“Is the tablet gone?” I nodded, and then he wanted to know if I remembered anything from the other side. 

“Yeah, I remember everything. I was in Death’s lock up.” He gave me an unsure smile and wanted to know what that was. “Uh, you ever wonder where a spirit goes after you do a salt and burn?” He didn’t answer, but by the way he was watching me, it looked like he wanted to hear where I was going with it, so even though I was tired of talking about it along with everything else in our lives, I said, “Unless they were really good or really bad as humans and get sent on to Heaven or Hell, they end up in Death’s lock up. If it weren’t for his lock up, they’d get thrown away in the Big Empty . . . just a big black void of nothingness, but he thinks it’s a waste to throw souls away, because souls are so powerful, so he’s built this whole place where he keeps them, and that makes him more powerful. You’re put in a cell, but it’s more like a room with bars on one side, which is what I guess a cell is, but mine was set up like my special place with a bean bag couch, and book cases full of books I’d always wanted to read and DVDs of every movie I’d ever want to watch and a record player with tons of records from all my favorite bands, and it felt safe.” Dean still didn’t look like he was sure if he should believe that and asked what records were there. “I wasn’t there long enough to see most of them, but I caught sight of Come on Pilgrim, Surfer Rosa, Doolittle, the Joy Division Peel Sessions, uh, Ziggy Stardust, um, Road to Ruin, and the Velvet Underground and Nico, and then it was time to go.” 

I don’t know how long we were talking, but it was a while. He told me what Crowley had been saying about the First Blade he’d wanted Dean to find with him, and I told him the First Blade wouldn’t work unless somebody had the Mark of Cain, but if someone had the Mark of Cain, they’d become a demon eventually. “You think Crowley knows that?” 

_That snake? Of course he did_ “Yeah, he definitely knows that. My guess is that’s why he wanted to get you involved. There’s no way Cain would give something like that to someone who was already a demon.” 

“How do you know that?” 

“Things I’ve heard. Cain might be a demon, but he’s not really a fan of demons, and I know he’s not a fan of Abaddon. He’s the one who trained her.” Then Dean asked me if I wanted to get out of there, so we could talk some more about that. I looked around. I guess it did look like they were closing, but I didn’t know what was waiting for him outside those doors. I wondered if I should give him a warning if it looked like they were going to go with a hostile take down.

He finished paying off the tab he’d started at the bar, and I started to say, “I should probably warn you –“ 

I guess he didn’t want to hear any warnings, because he turned away from the bar, and the next thing I knew, his mouth was on mine, and his arm was pulling me closer, and I hadn’t been expecting it, but it felt so familiar. But I couldn’t. 

“What’s wrong? I thought . . .” 

“It’s complicated.” 

He smiled and said, “Nothing complicated about it. You with somebody or . . . “ 

That was complicated too. “Not for almost a year, but he’s my partner, and –“ 

He came back to me, and that electric feeling was there when our tongues met. When it happened, he hesitated for a fraction of a second and then pulled me closer before he really went for it.

 _Things have been over with my Dean for a while, but are they really over? Maybe not. Probably not. But why hasn’t he said they aren’t if they aren’t? I want Dean, but he doesn’t really want me anymore, and why would he? I was terrible in that do-over timeline, especially after I got my memories back, and I was terrible when we got back home. I haven’t really been myself since then either. It seems like these days we’re only milling around each other because of Rogue . . . and then there’s Rogue, and what’s happening right now isn’t fair to this sad-Dean either. I don’t want to be the equivalent of his Mark of Cain. Things are wrong between this Dean and his Sam right now. What if he makes a hasty decision to jump universes without his brother because of this? John said this soul mate business was pretty serious. Is something like this all it takes, or is there more to it? I should stop this. Then why can’t I? I don’t want to? My Dean doesn’t want me, and I miss him, and this one wants me . . . at least right now. How pathetic am I? Pretty damn pathetic. What the hell is wrong with me?_

“I can’t do this. I can’t do it to you. I can’t do it to him. I need to go.” 

He held himself less than an inch away from my lips and breathed out, “Then go . . . no one’s stopping you.” 

_Step away. Turn around and go. Tell the others what we’re supposed to do in this timeline and let them deal with it. You can’t be a part of it._ I made the mistake of pulling a little further away and looking up at him. I knew those eyes. I knew that face. I knew that look. It was smoldering. He wasn’t just up for a good time as a distraction. He was up for getting everything he was feeling out, and that was some of the best sex we had. _Sign me up for needing that kind of release too. No. Stop it. Let go and take a step back. Done. Take another step back. Done. Now turn and walk out the door._


	30. Take Charge Sam

Sam watched Beth walk out the side door and took a step out from his hiding place to go find out what was going on, but before he got further than that, another Dean came out behind her, grabbed her arm, pulled her back towards him, and landed one on her. _Oh no._ Sam looked in the direction where he knew Dean was hiding and saw his brother start stalking towards them. _Oh this is going to be bad._ He had to get there before him.

Running, Sam got there just in time to slid into position using the gravel in the parking lot. “Dean, no.“ 

Dean tried to side-step him, and Sam heard the Dean behind him say his name, and then he heard another Dean behind that one say, “Hey, Winchester,” so Sam’s brother, Sam, and the new Dean all turned to look, but the only one that went down from a sucker punch was the new Dean. The Dean they’d picked up in Purgatory shrugged at the rest of them and put his knuckle-dusters back in his pocket, while Beth knelt down to check on the new Dean, who was out cold. There were too many Deans. This was going to get confusing. 

Sam looked at his brother and said, “You all right with being Silver Dean? He can be Green Dean, since he’s got a green jacket, and I don’t know what to call the one on the ground.” 

Dean looked past him at the guy on the ground and said, “How about dickhead? And Silver Dean? Come on. Makes me sound old. What’s wrong with just calling me Dean?” 

_They’ll all want to be called Dean if one of them gets to be called Dean._ Green Dean said, “No way am I going to be called Green Dean. How about the Best Hunter in the Universe?” 

Sam looked back at Green Dean and said, “We’ll keep working on it. Is there another me around here?” 

Beth shook her head. “Unless you mean Purgatory Sam, no.” 

_Purgatory Sam?_ “Why is he Purgatory Sam? He hasn’t even been to Purgatory.” 

Beth looked up at him and answered, “They’re from the Purgatory Universe, so Purgatory Sam, Dean, and Cas.” 

Sam muttered, “Like I said, we’ll work on it . . . Do you know where or when we are?” 

Beth looked back down at the Dean on the ground and said, “I’m pretty sure his brother just got rid of Gadreel, and Crowley was in there to talk him into going to find the First Blade.” 

Sam exhaled slowly at that. “So, we got here just in time. What happened with Crowley?” 

A look of annoyance flickered across her face. “I used my soul to blind him, knocked him back off his barstool and told them he was having a heart attack, so that when I finished with the killing exorcism and there was a dead body, I’d be covered when the ambulance showed up, but –“ she nodded down at the Dean on the ground and said, “He stopped me.”

Sam sighed when his brother said, “How? With his tongue down your throat?” 

Beth didn’t rise to it. “No, as soon as Crowley started flickering, this Dean held a knife on me nobody could see, but I figured he wouldn’t stab me in front of the crowd we were getting, so I kept doing fake CPR compressions and going with the exorcism. He figured out I was killing Crowley and asked if it was going to get brighter, and I let him know it would, so he said I couldn’t finish it in front of everyone. I wanted to take Crowley outside and finish it, but he said I’d already told everyone Crowley was dying, so taking him outside would seem off.” 

Dean asked where the ambulance was, and Beth said, “As soon as I stopped the exorcism, Crowley got back up, and I think they cancelled it, or he made sure they cancelled it. I told him to make it look good before he got back up. I think he tried . . . cause well . . . once you start the exorcism, a demon can’t go anywhere, and now he knows it . . . He’s pretty pissed at me. Might be a problem.” _Yeah, shift the focus to Crowley and off of what just happened._

Green Dean got the memo. “So, you have a pissed off Crowley on your ass?” 

Beth looked over at Green Dean and relaxed a little. “Yep. I don’t see how I wouldn’t. I almost killed him, and he’s never seen me until now. You, Sam and Cas . . . You threaten him and might make the occasional weak attempt on him, but you never really do anything. You know him. He knows you. You have a mutually beneficial relationship with him. I don’t. And I was 20 seconds away from ending him, and he knew it . . . Then I taught this Dean the exorcism. I’d say I firmly put a target on my back. It might be a problem, but it’s one that we can use.” 

After that, they got the Dean on the ground up and carried him to his car, so they could get him to the motel where Gabriel was. While Sam’s brother and Green Dean argued about who was driving, Sam went to get the other Sam, Cas and Castiel who were on the other side of the bar. They needed to get away from this place as soon as possible.

When they got back to the motel, they sat around waiting for the newest Dean . . . what should they call him? He had a black jacket . . . Black Jack Dean? Sam was going with it. They were waiting for Black Jack Dean to wake up. He was in the other room. Castiel was watching him. Shouldn't be too long. 

That's why Sam was a little annoyed that his brother, Cas, and the other Sam all decided to go on a liquor store run after a sum total of 5 minutes. Getting bored 2 minutes after they left, Green Dean started to complain. “There a way we can get any of our stuff, or are we gonna have to buy new stuff every time we do this?” Beth must’ve asked Chuck to take care of it because by the time Sam looked at Green Dean, Green Dean was unzipping one of the bags next to him to make sure everything was there. 

Apparently, all of Green Dean’s stuff was there, because the next thing out of Green Dean’s mouth made Sam give him an annoyed look. “Dude, are you hitting on her?” 

Green Dean smirked. “What? She has a type. I’m it. Maybe it’ll get your brother off his ass and do something about it.” 

Maybe. It was more likely that Dean would think she’d be better off with one of these two jokers. Sam looked at Beth and said, “You couldn’t do any better than that to keep him at arms length?“ 

Beth ducked her head, and Green Dean said, “Seriously, Sam? It’s been a year. He may not want to leave her. He may never want to leave her, but he did. Is she seriously supposed to be a nun forever waiting on him? I don’t get it . . . I never once was with someone I thought was for me and only me and expected her to keep it that way, whether we were together or not. It sure as hell wasn’t that way with Lisa. I knew the right thing was to let her go and stay as far away as possible.” 

_Yeah, right. Like Green Dean was a saint._ “After you had Cas erase memories of you from her and Ben and everyone who ever knew you through her, right? That wasn’t for her. That was for you. What’s it like when that happens, Beth?” 

Sam looked over at her when she didn’t say anything, and she sighed. “It wasn’t quite the same thing. Every human I knew, I knew through Dean, so I didn’t know anybody when I came back.” 

Sam wanted more than that. He was trying to prove a point here. “Yeah, but there were big gaps in your memory, right?” 

Beth slumped. “Why are you doing this? Are you trying to make him think he isn’t as good as your brother?” 

_No, maybe._ “He’s the one who thinks the way Dean is with –“ 

Beth’s eyebrows rose, and she said, “How about what I think about the way Dean is with me?” 

_Uhhh. Crap._ His intention hadn’t been for her to finally say all the things that were wrong with Dean, but that’s not where she went with it at all. “I think he’s right to want distance. I think I do the best I can, but I’m a mess, and he has his own problems to deal with. I’m too broken to ever be fixed, and it wasn’t like that at the start, because my Dad fixed me for as long as he could, but then the way I really am had to come out. It was a lot to ask anyone to deal with and Dean did it without any problems. And I think that’s because Dad set it up, so I’d remember Heaven gradually, so when everything finally came out, it wouldn’t hit me all at once, but it didn’t hit Dean all at once either. And Dean was a perfect Dad those 3 months I was gone, and then I came back, and he spent more time dealing with my problems than he did with Rogue, and then I got worse and so did life, and then we got to have a do-over, and things were fine, because I wasn’t broken again, but as soon as I remembered who I was, all my problems came back at once, and I didn’t know what to do with them, and Dean didn’t either, so Dean finally did what any sane person would do and ran . . . it’s like with frogs. If you put them in a pan of normal water and slowly turn up the heat, they’ll boil alive, but if you put a frog in a pan of boiling water, it’ll jump out straight away . . . and that doesn’t even include all the problems I create on a daily basis. It’s just way too much and I keep piling more on top.” She finished and sighed again before she said she was going to check on Rogue. 

As soon as she was gone, a pillow came flying his way, and Green Dean said, “Are you happy now?” 

_Not really._ “No, but she’s probably right . . . about the frog thing. Rogue looks like Beth did when Beth was that age. Imagine Rogue being raised in a cell with no light and no interaction with anyone other than angels . . . Beth didn’t even know she was a human or what a human was until she was 7 or 8. The closest interaction she had with humans was watching them down here. When she got her body back, I didn’t know she was in there. I just thought Rachel was dead, so I buried her next to Dean. Gabriel was supposed to take her for the 4 months he was in Hell, but he wasn’t told it’d be his daughter, so he showed up with Kali and was planning on pawning Beth off on her. Kali wanted to bind her soul to her, and Beth told Gabriel to get her away from her, and she’d figure it out herself, so he left and came back a few days later. She’d made it as far as Dean’s grave. It’d been raining all day. She liked it, because she’d never felt anything like it in Heaven, and she liked the mud, because it was softer than anything she ever had to lie on in Heaven. She wanted Gabriel to leave her there. She didn’t know she had to eat. She didn’t know how to walk in a body. She didn’t know she couldn’t just lie on top of a grave for 4 months. That’s the real Beth. She is a lot of work. She –“ 

“That’s not even close to the woman I know.”

That didn’t mean that wasn’t who she really was at heart. “That Beth was hidden underneath the life Gabriel gave her when he erased her memories of Heaven and raised her all over again from scratch. That’s why she can pass as normal now. When the memory blocks he gave her broke down overtime, she started coming out more. She’s more independent and less social. She reads a lot. She has a lot of nightmares. She doesn’t take care of herself. She’ll forget to eat or sleep for days if she doesn’t have someone reminding her to do it. That’s usually my job. She needs to be protected, but she doesn’t think she does, because that Beth never had anyone protect her and honestly doesn’t know why anyone would do that for her. The Beth who’s lived through an Apocalypse is . . . well, I guess you probably saw her in Purgatory. She lives for combat, not just hunting, but actual combat. She tends to just do things and doesn’t tell you ahead of time that she’s going to do them, and they’re usually really dangerous. She can take off for days or weeks at a time. She’ll tell you what she’s doing and that she’ll be back, but that’s about it. She can be an inspirational speaker, and she cares about people a lot, but she’s still on the outside looking in with most people unless they’re kids or hunters . . . The Beth brought up with Dad as her mentor was actually pretty well adjusted even though she was always on the move and kind of wild. She went from being that to all 3 in about 30 seconds in that universe where we trained before we started this, and maybe Dean and I didn’t really know what to do when that happened, but Dean definitely handled it worse than I did. Stuff like that sticks with her. It’s probably why he hasn’t figured out a way to make things right yet.” 

“So, Dad actually let you bring her with you on the road?” 

Sam rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and she never had to live by the same rules as us. She did when she trained, but other than that, she did whatever she wanted. She and Dad had this game they played on hunts. If he won, he got a point. If she won, he’d write something in one of her journals that he thought she should know about the next time we hunted whatever it was . . . if he was in a really good mood, he’d get her something, like an amulet or hex bag or something . . . and the older she got, the more they annoyed me . . . Dad would be raging about something, and she’d kick me and Dean out, and then when we came back, they’d be drunk. Dad would be chilled out and she’d be smoking and make all my stuff smell like smoke, and I don’t know about your Dad, but mine never smoked . . . either time I grew up with him . . . except for maybe when he was in Nam, and I am convinced she got him to smoke with her, and when I complained about it, Beth would say some smart ass thing to piss me off more and Dad would take her side and send me out to go get her something, like hot chocolate . . . least that’s what he did the last time it happened, and the whole reason he was mad to start off with was because she wouldn’t give us the Colt.” 

Green Dean grinned and said, “The Colt?” 

“Yeah, she stole it out from under us in that vamp nest. We ran into some trouble, and she came out of nowhere and started shooting the vamps using her crossbow and taking heads. Dad was impressed until she slid past him, like she was sliding into home, snatched the Colt, and then took off with it out a window. Then you should’ve seen his face.” Sam found himself laughing along with Green Dean at the thought of that. He guessed it hadn’t all been bad. 

“I just can’t picture it . . . Was he really the same –“ 

“Yeah, I grew up the same way you did the first time around, so I know what your Dad was like. He was the same man. She just brought out a side of him I never saw . . . She wasn’t his kid, but he couldn’t leave her anywhere, or Dean would’ve stayed with her, so –“ 

Green Dean shook his head. “There’s no way –“ 

Sam’s eyebrows arched, and he said, “How do you think he got her to come with us? I was there. He told Dad he wasn’t leaving without her. Dad told him we were going, and Dean said she was his responsibility, and he wasn’t going to abandon her. Dad thought he got her pregnant, and that set him off. He threw Dean into a wall, and then Dean said it wasn’t that. Dad told him he needed to get his priorities straight. Family came first. Dean told him she was coming with us or else. Dad told him to think long and hard about what he said next and about whether he wanted to throw his family away for some girl, and Dean said he didn’t want to throw his family away. What he wanted was to bring her with us, because that’s what you do when you meet someone. You bring them into your family, and then Dad kicked me out and they talked about it, and Dad went to get her maybe 20 minutes later.” 

Green Dean sat forward and exhaled a laugh. “How old was he?” 

Sam smiled proudly in response. “17.” 

Green Dean shook his head and said, “He’s got more balls than I thought,” and Sam laughed. This was pretty good. He kind of liked talking to a brother who understood him, and who also hadn’t seen him at his worst and couldn’t hold it against him. 

“Who the hell are you people?” Sam and Green Dean both looked in the direction where that’d come from, and Sam wasn’t entirely sure what to do about it. The third Dean was awake, and he looked equal parts angry and confused.


	31. Nothing Better to Do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is from the newest Dean's point of view.

Dean didn’t know what was going on here, but it didn’t really seem like a shifter thing even if he was testing that as soon as he got the chance. The other one that looked like him got to his feet. “What the hell did you do to Cas?”

Yeah, that’s what made Dean think this wasn’t a shifter thing. That guy back there had definitely been an angel, and he looked like Cas, but Cas wouldn’t tie him up and guard him that way. Either another angel had kicked Cas out of his vessel, or something else was going on here. The fact that there was someone who looked like him talking with someone who looked like his brother about their Dad and all kinds of other things, like they knew what the other was talking about, but hadn’t lived it together said something else was going on.  
“Whoever that was that looked like Cas is fine . . . wherever he landed.” 

The guy who looked like Dean looked past him into the other room and shouted, “You banished him?!” before he looked at Sam and yelled, “Are we gonna lose an angel every-fucking time we do one of these universes?!” _Universes?_

The thing that looked like Sam got to his feet and said, “Uh, the odds so far aren’t looking good. We’re 0 for 2 now. I’m thinking maybe my Cas has the right idea on getting rid of his grace,” before he looked at Dean. “We’re from different universes, or I guess you could call them timelines. Our brothers are here too, but they’re out with my Cas getting liquor and probably driving until Dean calms down.” 

_Calms down?_ “He the one that hit me?” _Nope. Guy standing there was._ Dean wasn’t letting that go, but he wasn’t gonna do anything about it until he got some answers. “The woman –“ 

The one who looked like Sam was fast enough to say, “She’s fine. She’s looking after her daughter in the other room.”

 _Daughter?_ “I wanna see her.” The one who looked like Sam kept his focus on Dean and called for Beth. She walked through the other doorway, looking annoyed until she caught sight of Dean and stopped dead in her tracks. “So which one did I meet in the bar tonight?” She looked confused, so he said, “Heaven, Apocalypse, or wild child?” She still didn’t know what he meant. “The guy who looks like Sam was saying –“ 

Sam interrupted him. “How long have you been there?” 

Sam didn’t want her knowing what he said about her. “Long enough.” Dean went back to watching Beth and said to Sam, “Did she really get killed by an okami?” 

Beth sighed, leaned against the door casually, and crossed her arms while she waited for Sam to answer. He knew before the guy who looked like Sam even answered, that was a yes. “Uh, yeah. A lake was frozen over. She ran out onto it to kill one. My brother followed her. There was a second one, and it went after Beth, because she’s the one who killed the first one. My brother decided it’d be a good idea to shoot the ice out from under it. They were on their way back to the shore, and the okami broke the ice under Beth and dragged her under. By the time Dean got to them and killed it, she wasn’t breathing. He got her heart started, but the damage was done, and she didn’t make it.” 

_Drowning, just like she said._ “Your brother . . . I’m guessing he looks like this one?” Sam said yeah, so Dean said, “Guessing he’s the one who made a deal with Death to get her back?” Sam said yeah again, so Dean asked, “For what?” _A tablet on Death just like she said._ Didn’t mean anything necessarily, but they would’ve had to go over everything he and she had talked about tonight to corroborate something like that. He hadn’t been out that long.

“How many of you are there?” 

Beth pointed behind her with her thumb and said, “Rogue and I are both one of a kind in this universe.” There was that universe talk again, and who was Rogue? Her daughter? If it was, he kind of liked that name. 

“And the one where you come from is one with some fucked up version of Dad who let you go on the road with them?” 

Beth shook her head. “No. The one I’m from was destroyed by a Croatoan outbreak a few years ago. We’ve got 5 camps and about 10,000 people that we’ve been able to save so far. The one where I went out with them on the road as a teenager was another universe we were sent to as something of a training exercise to see if we could change the future without destroying an entire universe the way ours was.” 

She was from the Apocalypse one . . . If that was true, that was rough. “And this Heaven thing he was saying . . . “

Beth looked at Sam and said, “I don’t know what he was saying, but I was taken the day I was born, and the angels tore my soul in half. They put half of it back in my body, and left me up there . . . I guess you could say that I was about as aware of her as you have been of him,” she paused to nod at the guy who looked like Dean, and then added, “I never knew she existed until about 6 months before I got out of Heaven. She was her own person even though technically she was still me. I used to call her my evil twin.” 

Dean looked at the other Dean and said, “Is he my evil twin,” and she smiled.

“No. He’s you. He just got out of Purgatory. He and his brother decided to help us on our mission.” 

Before Dean had to even ask Sam said, “We’re trying to stop God’s sister from being released. There’s one timeline where that happens, and it’s a good outcome, but in the rest of them . . . See, she’s been locked away since the beginning of creation, and if she gets out, she’s going to want to destroy that Creation to get back at her brother. If you get the Mark of Cain, that’s where it leads.” 

_Right . . . She said something about the Mark of Cain earlier._ Looking at her again, Dean said, “That the thing that makes you go demon?” She nodded. “And God sent you on this mission?” 

She nodded again, and he was about to say that was bullshit, but she said, “What do you want Dean? Anything in the universe, and –“ 

He didn’t even have to think about it. “Gadreel’s head on a stick.” 

Beth sighed and said, “I’m not asking for that. I’ll ask if God will bring Gadreel here, and you can kill him yourself. I think that’s what you need more than a head randomly popping up on a stick in front of you. You have any holy oil?” He didn’t know. He’d have to go check his car, and he didn’t think they’d let him leaving here be all that easy. 

He didn’t answer, and Beth said, “God, if Gadreel in a ring of holy fire in your own room would make you happy, have at it.” 

A couple of seconds later Dean heard a fire rage up behind him. He automatically went to go look, and froze after he got into the room. The other Dean and Sam came up behind him to have a look, and he didn’t even mind that they were that close. He looked back at Beth. She looked chilled out and relaxed. The Dean standing next to him asked, “Is that the guy who killed Kevin?” 

Glancing at the other him, Dean muttered, “Yeah.” 

Sam unable to draw his attention away from Gadreel said, “You’d better make this quick. He’s on Metatron’s payroll, and I’m pretty sure Metatron will come looking for him. Metatron isn’t someone we want to see right now. We’re not ready for him, and he hasn’t even leveled up to God status yet.” 

Dean looked down at his empty hands. “I don’t have anything to kill him with. You dickheads took all my stuff.” 

He looked behind him when he heard Beth say, “Here. You can use mine, but I’m watching you. You’d better not steal it.” 

Expecting an angel blade, she handed him a short sword instead. “This isn’t –“ 

“It is. It’s mine. Custom made.” 

_Is she?_ “Are you an angel?” 

She laughed. “No. Angels don’t have souls.” 

Then something else he’d heard clicked. “But you’re half-angel if Gabriel is your Dad, right? A nephilim?” 

She shook her head. “I don’t have grace. I’m not tall. I’m not strong. I can’t see an angel’s true form. When I met Sam, I was half human and half nothing. My soul started growing, and now I’m 100% human with some characteristics from my Dad thrown in. Are you going to do this, or am I going to have to do it to speed this along?” 

Dean subconsciously gave Sam a half-grin, like he expected him to think that was funny too, until he remembered this wasn’t his brother, and that angel in there had killed Kevin and took off with the real Sam. Dean actually had Gadreel and could do whatever he wanted to him now. He looked back when he heard the door between rooms close behind him. He was alone . . . except for Beth, but she seemed to be watching her blade more than she was watching him. Couldn’t exactly torture Gadreel with her standing there. That’s what he really wanted to do. “Can you –“ 

She shook her head. “I love my angel blade.” 

She was so serious that he snorted. “Could you turn around at least?” She really seemed torn. The blade really seemed to mean a lot to her, so he stopped thinking about killing Gadreel and just did it. Didn’t even listen to anything Gadreel had to say, just walked through the flames, grabbed ahold of his shoulder, and thrust the blade up into Gadreel’s chest. 

“Oh that is a shame. Who’s going to be my second in command now?” Dean turned to see Metatron on the other side of the flames. “Dean, Dean, -“ 

That’s all Metatron got to say. Dean’s attention turned to Beth because she started saying something in a language he didn’t know, and he was kind of surprised by it. She nodded her head in the direction of Metatron to remind him where his focus needed to be, but when Dean looked at Metatron . . . Metatron wasn’t moving. Why? 

Dean came out of the flames and went over to her. “What are you doing?” She slumped, rolled her eyes, and then grabbed her angel blade out of his hand before she stalked up to Meatron and hesitated. Then she smiled, cut Metatron’s shirt open and cut some kind of a sigil into his chest and put another one on his forehead before she stepped back and said, “I wouldn’t waste time getting those off considering where they are.” 

Metatron flung her back into a wall, and Dean went to her to help her sit up, but when he looked over his shoulder, Metatron was gone. “What’d you just do?” 

She she looked at where Metatron had been standing and said, “Painted two targets on my back in one day,” before she added, “I was exorcising him, because I thought maybe you could kill him while I held him in place, but –“ 

“You can’t exorcise angels.” 

Looking up at him, she seemed confident in her response. “Sure you can. It’s what Alistair was trying to do to Cas when Sam showed up . . . Oh wait, you were probably unconscious by then.” Yeah, he didn’t remember that at all. 

“What’d you carve into him?” 

She sat up a little higher and said, “A sigil to siphon off his grace, but I put it right over the two most vital parts of his body, so it’ll work faster . . . He has to cut them both off if he wants to live. It’s a slow way to kill them. It won’t kill him, because he’ll get them off in time, but it’ll make him weaker for a while. I should’ve just killed him really, but I wanted to make him suffer a little, and now he will.” 

_Would’ve been good to know before I killed Gadreel._ Dean helped her to her feet and asked her how she knew that stuff. “I read a lot in Heaven. Usually things angels wouldn’t want humans to know.” 

Yeah, he’d heard Sam say something like that in the other room. “Could’ve used you on a lot of hunts . . . What’d you do about Lucifer?” 

She leaned back against the wall and said, “I didn’t do anything, but my Dad gave us sniper rounds made out of Raphael’s archangel blade, and Dean used those to kill Lucifer from 3 blocks away.” 

Still couldn’t get over her Dad being Gabriel. That guy was always a dick. She didn’t look anything like him. Either Gabriel looked different where she was from, or he’d used a different vessel when she was made for some reason. Was he seriously considering the possibility that what they were saying was real? He probably wouldn’t be if he hadn’t liked her as much as he did back in that bar and if he hadn’t heard the guy who looked and sounded like Sam saying all that stuff he was saying to the other guy in the other room.

Glancing towards the door, Dean said, “They usually take this long to respond when someone gets thrown against a wall?” 

She smiled. “I asked both of them to stay with Rogue no matter what happened. I trust both of them to do it. If anything could even get past Purgatory Dean, Sam wouldn’t let it get past him. He’s been helping us raise her since she was born.” Sam helping him raise a kid . . . couldn’t imagine anything close to that being possible now. He needed to get off the subject of Sam.

He looked back over his shoulder at the ring of holy fire. “You knew Metatron would show.” 

“Not until Sam said it, but I thought he was probably right.” She looked around Dean towards Gadreel’s body and asked, “You feel better?” 

“Not really."

"I didn’t think you would. It wouldn’t change what’s happened.”

Looking back down at her, he asked, “Is all this really happening? Is he really dead?” She nodded, so he said, “How’d you get him here?” Her eyes flicked to the ceiling. “God did it. For you?” 

He took a step closer to her and noticed her breathing stopped for a couple of seconds before it silently picked up again a little faster. He knew he hadn’t been the only one who felt it earlier. “Um, yeah, I made a deal with God, so I could get out of Heaven and get my body back . . . It’s part of that deal.” 

Leaning a little closer, Dean said, “Sounds like he gave you a lot, but he didn’t do it for nothing. What’d you give him?” 

She watched his lips, while she answered, “It’s hard to explain and between us.” Her eyes flicked up to his, and she added, “What are you doing? I told you I can’t.” 

“Right. And it’s complicated.” Before she could say anything he asked, “Is because you have a kid?” She breathed out, “No,” so he said, “Is it her Dad?” She pulled away and looked up at him. Well, that was a yes. “Thought you said it’s been –“ 

The vulnerable look she gave him made him stop. “It has. He said even when it’s over it isn’t really over with us. You’re him, but you’re not, and I really messed up earlier . . . I’m sorry.” 

If that guy was supposed to be him, then he didn’t sound like him. He’d never expect someone to stay with him. He didn’t want anyone to stay with him. Look at what he did to the people around him. Didn’t really know what he was doing right now, cause a one and done wasn’t what he had in mind. Maybe it was earlier in the night, but then she took Crowley down to Ballroom Blitz, and Dean knew he’d seen her coming from the direction of the jukebox, so she’d done that on purpose, and he thought she might be fun. 

He’d enjoyed watching Crowley squirm, and then when Crowley flickered, he thought maybe she was a demon working for Abaddon until he figured out she was doing an exorcism. Then he thought maybe it didn’t have to be a one-night stand kind of thing. He’d thought maybe she could go on a hunt with him, and they could turn it into a weekend, and maybe meet up again to work other hunts together in the future, but then . . . he didn’t know what happened at the end of the night, but it went beyond her being a good time or being a distraction or even a booty call in the future. 

“What’d you do to me at the bar?” 

She took a couple of shallow breaths and said, “I’m your soul mate . . . I guess I’m any Dean Winchester’s soulmate, but I was never supposed to meet you. There’s only one I’m supposed to be with even if we’re not together.” 

He didn’t buy into that, but she seemed to think it was a real thing. “Is that why you stuck around with him after you ended it, or is it because of your kid?” 

In confusion, she said, “I didn’t end things. He did. He doesn’t want me anymore, but he can’t let go of me either. That’s why this can’t happen. It’s not fair to you, and it isn’t fair to him.” She pushed into his body with hers to get some space, so she could get out from between him and the wall, and went to the door while she said something about letting them know the coast was clear. 

“He’s an idiot.” 

She stopped and said, “No, he isn’t,” before she pulled the door open and kept on going. It looked like he could go if he wanted, but he kind of felt like sticking around to see what this whole universe thing was all about. It’s not like he had anywhere else to go, and right now it was one of the only things keeping him from putting a bullet in his brain.


	32. Like Mother Like Daughter

I looked around the corner into the room next door. There were empty bottles and cans everywhere, but nobody was there. Maybe they were out taking care of the dead body in the room on the other side? I wasn’t taking Rogue into either room. Our room was relatively clean. I looked back at her and asked what she wanted to do today. “Book.” 

I went to her bag to get her books and held them up for her to pick one, and she went with _Where the Wild Things Are._ I didn’t know how she wasn’t tired of it yet. She grabbed her Pet Monster and crawled up onto the bed. Then she patted the bed for me to sit next to her, and when I did, she did something I didn’t expect. She crawled into my lap and settled in like it wasn’t the first time she’d ever done that with me. Was she holding her Pet Monster as a security blanket to make her feel safer about possibly putting me in danger just by letting me hold her? Maybe. It almost seemed like a breakthrough of sorts, and she hadn’t made a big deal about it at all. Maybe I shouldn’t either.

About halfway through the book, she jumped when someone came into the room from our right. I paused to see if she’d get up now, but she relaxed a little and said, “Dad.” 

It took me a couple of seconds to figure out which one that was. “That’s not your Dad. That’s not Uncle Dad either.” She did a double take and demanded silver, so I explained what she wanted from him. “Her Dad wears a silver amulet. He shows it to her to prove he’s him. The other Dean has a silver coin his brother got him, so he could show it to her. She calls him Uncle Dad.” 

Dean pulled out a silver knife and said, “She’s running a shifter test on me?” 

Well, yeah, but he didn’t have to cut himself in front of her, so I told him that. She watched him as he crouched down in front of her before she watched the knife as he put the flat part against the underside of his wrist. As soon as he was done, she looked up at him and said, “No Mon.” 

“She said you’re not a monster.” 

“How does she know that means I’m not a monster?” 

I wasn’t sure that she really did. “I don’t think she quite understands it, but I know her Dad told her if someone who looked like him could touch silver, then they weren’t a monster . . . one step at a time. We haven’t really gotten into demons or Leviathan yet.” 

Looking at her stuffed monster, and treating her the way any Dean I’d seen treated kids, he said, “That’s your monster?” 

She looked down at it and nodded while she petted it. “My pet . . . No bad. Fire mon bad.” 

I taught her that one. He looked at me for an explanation, so I said, “To keep her from confusing her toy with what a real monster was, I told her that her monster wasn’t bad, because it was her pet, like Millie and Jules, our dogs are, but real monsters are like the Alpha Changeling and the Changeling mothers that showed up when I was alone with Rogue one time. She was about 5 months old, so I don’t know how much of it she remembers, but I know she remembers the fire, because now she’s scared of fire . . . They’re fire monsters to her.” 

“She looks like you.” 

“That’s mostly the hair. She has her Dad’s eyes.” He asked how old she was, and the answer to that was tricky. “Uh, well she turned 1 in December, and then we stayed at the camp for January. We went on the road in February. In march, we were supposed to go back to the camp, but we found out about people were trading people to monsters for food and guns and shut those places down, and then we shut down a couple of holding pens where the monsters were sending people after they left the trading posts. We dealt with that half of March, and I was busy setting up new camps. That’s also when we got sent to the other universe for 13 years and came back in April. We had to finish off at least the Alpha Vamp and his army. It took us about a month to do that and get home, so that’s May. Then we stayed at the camp for about 2 months, so that’s July, and then we agreed to go on this mission for God, and Dean, Cas, and I ended up in Purgatory with the other Dean and Cas for 2 months, so that’s September even though it wasn’t September in that timeline. Uh, we hung around for about a month after we got out and that’s October. Then we came here, so I guess she’ll be 2 in 2 months even though it’s December now, and her birthday is 4 days before Christmas.” Yeah it was sad I had to think it through like that.

He exhaled a laugh he didn’t really mean and shook his head before he looked at her again. “Guess you’ll be getting 2 birthdays, huh?” She smiled back at him and nodded before she put up two fingers. “She knows what 2 is?” Well, she knew what ‘2’ was, but I didn’t know if she understood what 2 birthdays meant. 

“Rogue. Can you count to 5?” She started putting up her fingers and counting them off all the way to 5. Sam taught her that. 

Dean shook his head again while he watched her. “She’s pretty . . . advanced for a kid her age, right?” 

“She is on some things. It feels like she comes out with something new almost every day.” 

“Well, I guess her Mom did lecture a teacher about the legal system when she was 5.” He remembered that too? He tilted his head towards the other room and said, “The one your Sam won’t stop calling Green Dean said that was you . . . You’re the one who gave me Christmas presents for Sam too, right?” I nodded, and he looked off to the side with a slight shake of his head. Whatever he was thinking, he wouldn’t say it. 

“What’s Sam calling you?” 

He looked at me again and said, “Black Jack Dean,” before he pulled at his jacket to highlight that it was because of its color. That was a terrible name. 

“It sounds like a pirate’s name.” 

A quick laugh escaped him before his smile fell away, and he looked at Rogue. “What are you gonna call me?” 

Rogue looked at me for clarification. “What’s his name?” She pointed at him, so I said, “She wants you to come closer to see if she can find any differences. She doesn’t really need the silver to tell the other two apart now.” 

He watched me to see if I was being serious and figured I was, so he looked at her and said, “Is you naming me a big deal?” She nodded, and he glanced at me. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea . . . I don’t know how long –“ 

I looked at the top of her head and tried to keep him from feeling uncomfortable. “She didn’t know what you meant. I think she probably thought you were asking if she wanted you to come closer.” 

Rogue decided that he’d taken too long and flipped her hand in his direction while she said, “Dog Dad,” and went back to looking at the book in my hand, and Dean laughed.

“Did she just name me Dog Dad?” 

I smiled and asked, “Rogue who’s Dog Dad?” She pointed at Dean, so I laughed. “Guess so . . . think maybe if you shave it might throw her off.” 

He muttered Dog Dad with a grin before she glanced in his direction and said, “I tect Dog Dad.” 

That was new. Dean looked at me for an explanation. “Uh . . . She said she’s going to protect you. She doesn’t think she needs to protect her Dad or the other Dean. Mostly she thinks she just needs to protect me.” 

Dean told her he didn’t need to be protected, and she nodded while she flipped to the next page in the book and said, “I tect Dog Dad.” 

This should be interesting. “Watch this . . . Rogue, it is not your job to protect him, and it is not your job to protect Mom.” 

As soon I said she wasn’t allowed to protect me, she slammed her book closed and yelled, “No! I tect Mom,” before she turned around to face me, got on her knees in my lap, put her hand on the side of my face and whispered, “I tect Mom.” I shook my head, and she said, “Yes.” 

Dean asked what she was doing, so I tried to explain. “Asking me not to fire her.” 

“Why does she feel like she has to protect you?”

“I thought she, not hated, but didn’t really like me for a long time . . . probably since those changelings I was telling you about. That was the first time I picked her up, and it was to put her in a duffle bag, so I could hide her, while I dealt with them in a motel room about this size. I got my ass handed to me by the Alpha. The only way we made it out is because I tapped into my soul to access the power in it. If you want to know what it’s like when I do that, you could probably ask –“ 

“Yeah, they said something about it last night.”

“Good. I’m sick of talking about it. Anyway, when that whole thing was over, I was in pretty bad shape, and Rogue didn’t let me hold her again. This right now with her sitting in my lap is the first time she’s done that without someone putting her there . . . ever, and it’s because she thinks me holding her was why I got hurt . . . When Dean came back looking 5 years younger and didn’t know her, she asked him if it was her job to protect me by herself now, because her Dad wasn’t there. He didn’t know what she was saying, and I didn’t know her Dad ever told her that it was their job to protect me, but I figured out what she was saying and told her that wasn’t her job. It’s my job to protect her. I don’t want her to have that kind of a burden on her shoulders at her age, but she chased me around the house yelling that she was going to protect me for about half an hour, and then she broke down in tears, and I had some damage control to do. Now whenever it comes up, she yells a little at first, and then she does this to try and get through to me a different way.” 

“What does she think it means when she says protect?” 

“Rogue, how do you protect me?” 

She balled her hand up into a little fist and said, “I hit tect Mom.” 

When I looked at him, he seemed confused. “Did she just say she hits to protect you?” 

“Yeah, she likes to hit people. Dean told her to only hit people when she’s protecting someone, and I’m thinking that’s when the protecting me conversation happened. He probably had to explain protecting me to her, and she thought hitting people to protect me was a great idea. I told her hitting people to protect herself or other people is okay, but she had to ask me first, because she didn’t know when somebody really needed to be protected . . . Sam was losing it in our home universe, because he didn’t remember that life, and she and I were hanging out in the woods. I turned around, and he’d picked her up and was going to take off with her, so I told her to hit him, and she did a couple of times in the face and kept wailing on his arms when he held her out in front of him, so it was a good distraction. Dean got to her and gave her back to me. That’s the incident that made them decide to do this mission and get their memories of their lives back. Anyway, I guess the point is that now that she’s made her mind up, I don’t think there’s much you can do to get her to change it. For some reason she wants to protect you, and she’ll try to do it, like it’s her full-time job. Anyone who says anything to you in a way she doesn’t like is going to get a little fist to the knee if I’m not there for her to ask if it’s okay to do first.” 

Dean leaned forward to be closer to her and asked, “Why do you want to protect me?” 

Crawling from me over to him, she used him to get her feet and pointed to his eyes. I shrugged when he looked at me to find out what that meant even though I had a pretty good idea why she’d done it. There was something in his eyes that made her think he needed to be protected. I’m guessing self-hatred and grief over Sam and Kevin topped the list, and those feelings definitely showed through no matter what he did to try and hide it. She was a very perceptive little girl when it came to being able to read people’s emotions and always had been. “Dog Dad?” 

He laughed and said, “What?” 

Putting her hand on his shoulder in a conversational way, she asked, “Lala?” 

He looked at me to find out what that meant, since I was her unofficial translator, while my Dad was out. “She wants to go for a drive in the Impala . . . She knows you all have one, and she loves it.” 

He gave her a genuinely warm smile, which was good to see. “Can’t. Your Dad took off with it last night, and he hasn’t come back yet.” 

She looked a little annoyed by that. “Fuck.” 

He laughed again and said, “That’s what I said when I found out,” and I’m pretty sure my face turned 10 shades of red. That was definitely a newer one, and one I’d been trying to keep under raps. 

“Rogue what did I say?” 

She looked looked at me and sighed. “Mom, say. Me, no say . . . Shh no tell.” Awesome. Now it was out that I told her not to tell anyone she heard it from me. This Dean seemed to think it was funny, but my Sam was going to kill me. “Uh, well, then . . . why did you say it?” 

She quickly responded, “Want Lala.” 

Dean told her he’d take her for a drive later when he got her back, and then he looked at me and added, “And it isn’t happening again.” Yeah, Dean the other Sam and Cas hadn’t been back yet. He’d never done that before and he hadn’t left with his own brother for some reason. My imagination was going wild with all the things that could mean.


	33. Rituals

Sitting on the foot of the bed next to Beth, Sam felt like he was in the hot seat as much as she was. It’d been a full day. Green Dean wanted to know where his brother was and Black Jack Dean wanted to know where his car was. All Sam could tell them was the truth. It’s all he had right now. “I don’t know where they are. They’ve never done something like this.” 

He looked over his shoulder at Beth to get her opinion on it, because she hadn’t said a whole lot . . . actually she hadn’t said anything all day, or at least she hadn’t to anyone who wasn’t Rogue as far as Sam knew. Beth looked from one Dean to the other and said, “Maybe since all three of them are together, it looks to outsiders like they’re the Sam, Dean, and Cas from this timeline, and they ran into trouble because of that?” 

She might’ve suggested that to maybe get these two Deans to go from being pissed off with them to getting pissed off with whatever invisible thing might have attacked the others, but she had to be thinking that Dean had gone somewhere to get back at her for what happened with Black Jack Dean yesterday. Sam was. It’s what used to happen with Rachel. Dean just never took off for more than a few hours back then, and he’d never done that to Beth, because she hadn’t given him a reason to until now. 

Looking up towards the ceiling, Beth said, “Dad? Are you free, or are you busy whoring around?” 

Black Jack Dean asked, “Dad? Wait, so you mean Gabriel is still alive?” 

Everyone turned to look in the corner when Gabriel said, “And in the flesh, but I’m not the asshat you knew,” before he looked at Beth and said, “What did I tell you about saying things like that to me?” 

“Not to do it, but where have you been since last night? You took off as soon as we got here.” Gabriel said he had rules to follow, and Beth grumbled, “Like the ones you had to follow in the do-over universe?” 

Crap. Sam forgot all about those rules. He wanted Gabriel’s answer to that one too and wasn’t all that thrilled with the answer. “Something like that.” 

Looking down at her hands, Beth sighed. “Well, then I’m formally asking you to stay here and help us. Our Dean and Cas and the Sam from the last universe took off last night, and they aren’t back yet.” Gabriel asked where the Castiel from the last timeline was, and Beth said, “The new Dean banished him.” 

“Why didn’t you ask for help sooner?”

“Because . . . I thought Dean was just mad at me, but since we’ve been here, I made Crowley and Metatron mad at me too, and I didn’t kill either one . . . and I forgot about Abaddon being out there somewhere . . . and Dean didn’t watch those DVDs I gave them in the do-over universe. Sam did, but he isn’t with them, so they have no idea what Abaddon looks like, or what to expect from her or Metatron except what I told them, which isn’t really the same as seeing it.” Well, now that she put it like that, Sam was worried about what might’ve happened too. Maybe it wasn’t as simple as Dean finding another woman.

Gabriel crouched down in front of her to get her attention and softly said, “Hey, kiddo, I know you’re blocking everyone like mad now, but it’s me. I need to know what’s really going on from you.” She never blocked Gabriel. Gabriel glanced at Sam and said, “That’s not true. She was doing it when you guys came home too. You two really did a number on her in the year I was gone,” before he looked at Beth. 

Beth glanced at her Dad and then hung her head. “I can’t stop doing it. I can’t remember how. And I can’t remember how to just unblock you and not unblock them.” 

Both Deans looked to Sam, and he wasn’t sure how to explain this to Dean Winchesters that hadn’t gotten used to it. “You’re soul mates with her too, which means in theory that you can read her mind, and if she tries, she can feel what you’re feeling and use that to know what you’re thinking.” 

Gabriel asked if Sam wanted to take them next door. “The last thing she needs is to hear you talking about her like she’s a toy you brought for show and tell.” Sam would argue with that, but Gabriel was going into ‘protect Beth at all costs’ mode, and he’d probably end up in a pink bunny suit. “Don’t tempt me.” Sam got up with a huff and took the two Deans next door before that could happen.

As soon as the door was closed one of the Deans said, “What the hell was that?” 

Sam walked past the burnt circle in the carpet and took one of the beds before answering. “What was what?” 

The Dean that must’ve asked that, pointed his thumb behind him and said, “Why is half the stuff you guys say like a foreign language?” 

Maybe it was the other Dean who’d said it, because he added, “What I wanna know is why you just took it from him like that?” And now Sam had wished he was paying more attention to what they’d been wearing in the other room, because they’d taken their coats off, and he wasn’t sure which one was which.

Sam decided to focus on the one who’d asked why he’d just done what Gabriel wanted. “During the civil war in Heaven, Beth was dying, and Dean went into his soul to save her. Instead of just doing it from his side, he found that where he ended up had a big hole in it, so he crossed over to her soul and decided that it’d be a good idea to make her start reliving her torture sessions in Heaven. He didn’t want her to get them back all at once, because he thought that would kill her. 

She sent Cas in to kick him out, but Cas ended up helping him. Every time they made her relive a memory, she felt like it was actually happening again. She’d lose track of time and wake up on the floor in a sweat with her heart racing, and she was supposed to be guarding them. She asked her Dad to come help. He got there when she was in the middle of a really bad one, and he woke Cas up and told him to go get Dean and if they weren’t back in 5 minutes, he was going smite Cas. I’m pretty sure he meant it. 

As soon as Gabriel got them back to Earth, he got back at Dean and Cas. I won’t say what he did to Dean, but he put Cas in a pink Easter Bunny costume and made him go somewhere like that TV Land place Gabriel sent us. Cas had to hand out rotten candy to children that did nothing but cry when they got it, because Beth had put her faith in him to help her, but he’d done the opposite of that. I don’t want that to happen to me. It’s better to stay as far away from her as possible when he’s feeling protective.” 

The Dean he'd answered said, “Yeah, but he kinda had a reason to do it, right? I mean that was kind of a dick thing for the other me to do, especially for a guy who’s been there and lived it and sure as hell wouldn’t want to feel like he never left.“ 

That Dean looked at the other Dean for backup, and the other Dean shrugged, like he wasn’t sure. “Yeah, but if her remembering everything at once would kill her, and what he did saved her, then he probably knew she’d get over it.” 

Sam watched the two of them start arguing about it after that, and then he figured out which one was which without needing to know what their jackets looked like. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it until now. Green Dean, you are who my brother was during the outbreak and everything that happened probably right up until Adam died.” He looked at the other Dean and added, “And Black Jack Dean is who he was after that . . . especially after he came back from the Wisconsin camp when we went to see Bobby and find out why I kept trying to kill Beth. It’s like he finally had to face the fact she and Adam were dead. And then he got her back during the civil war only to find out that if she died, she’d end up nowhere. That’s when he really started getting crazy, because he didn’t want to spend forever without her.” 

They both stopped arguing and looked at him before Green Dean said, “And that doesn’t bother you?” 

Well, he felt bad that going back to Wisconsin had been necessary because of him, but it'd had to be done. “Did you miss the part where I said I kept trying to kill her? We had to go back to Wisconsin.” 

Green Dean sat down on the opposite bed and said, “No, that’s not what I mean. My brother has a theory.” 

_Yeah, I bet he does._ “That I’m his evil twin? Yeah, I know.” 

Green Dean shook his head. “No, that the way I am with him is the way your brother is with her.” 

Black Jack Dean snorted, and Green Dean told him to shut up, because he didn’t mean it that way. Both of them shut up when Sam said, “He’s probably right. I lost my brother when I made him watch me put a demon in Beth and use my powers to try and make her tell me where Lilith was going to be. I did the same thing to her that I did to kill Lilith. I’m guessing you saw what happended to Lilith’s meat suit. Beth had just killed Ruby, and that’s part of why I did it, but I also did it because I hated Beth, and I wanted to get back at Dean. I’d told him all year that she was lying or misinformed about Ruby and about Lilith being the final seal, but he wouldn’t listen to me . . . about anything. He only listened to Beth . . . Anyway, Beth wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to know, and I knew her body couldn’t take anymore of what I was doing to her, so I held her down with my powers and drank her blood in front of Dean . . . had him handcuffed there to make him watch the whole thing . . . To give you an idea of what that was probably like, Beth says I turned her into a giant slurpee. And . . . my brother couldn’t take anymore. He believed that killing Lilith would release Lucifer, and he still told me that if I wanted to find Lilith to go ask Chuck, because I’d forgotten about Chuck. That’s why Lucifer got out in our universe, and that’s when I lost my brother. It’s why I spent the next year trying to find a way to go back in time and undo it, and when I thought I found it, I destroyed our universe trying to make it happen.” 

Neither one of them knew what to say to that, but Sam didn’t have time to say anything else because he felt something brush against the back of his leg and dropped down on one knee to see what was under the bed. When he saw what was down there, he flicked the safety back on and took his hand off the gun in the waist of his jeans. “You’re supposed to be in bed. What did Cas tell you about hiding?” 

Giving him an annoyed look Rogue said, “No Cas.” 

Sam shook his head. “I know he’s not here, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to follow the rules when he’s not around.” 

He reached for Rogue and she said, “Want Dad.” She never usually gave Sam problems. 

“He’s not here right now. You still have to go to bed.” 

Sam reached for her again, and she started crawling away from him and yelled, “No! Hide Dad! Hide Dad!” 

Getting on his stomach to reach her Sam said, “You can’t hide from your Dad. He isn’t here,” before he finally got a hold of her ankle and heard her say, “Fuck.” 

The two Deans started laughing, but Sam ignored them. Pulling her out from under the bed, Sam asked, “What did you just say?” She wouldn’t say it again, so they’d all probably heard right. “Where did you hear that?” Nothing. “Bet you heard it from your Mom.” Rogue shook her head and pointed at him. “I know you didn’t hear it from me. Did she tell you to say you did?” Rogue shook her head. It looked like they were going to have to have a word about lying. “You shouldn’t lie. It’s bad to lie. If somebody asks you a question, you should tell them what really happened.” 

One of the Deans added, “Unless you’re lying to protect someone. Then you don’t have to say.” Sam didn’t know which one of them said it, and they both shrugged, like they thought it was solid advice when he turned to give them an annoyed look. 

Looking back at Rogue, Sam said, “Did you hear that word from your Mom?” Rogue shook her head. “Your Dad?” She shook her head again, so he sighed. “You shouldn’t say it. It isn’t a word for kids.” She nodded, like she understood, but probably didn’t. He decided to leave it for now. “Why aren’t you in bed? I know you were, because I put you there.” 

Looking towards the bottom of the bed, she answered, “Hide Dad.” 

“You can hide from him when he gets back.” 

She sighed and said, “Work?” 

_Sam didn’t know._ “Yeah, he had to go to work, but he didn’t have time to say goodbye, because he had to get there really fast.” 

Slumping and giving him sad eyes, asked, “Back?” 

_I hope so._ “Yeah, he’ll be back.” 

Rogue cocked her head to the side the way Beth did when she was appraising someone, pointed at him, and said, “No say,” before she added, “Hide Dad,” and got down on her knees, so she could climb back under the bed. 

“What are you –“ 

Sam cut himself off and looked over at the door when he heard Beth’s voice come from that direction. “She obviously knows something is wrong because of the way we’re acting. She’s really perceptive. She thinks you’re lying about him coming back, and she wants to hide until he does . . . She has little rituals she does when we leave, so that we’ll come back. Like with me, I tell her to be good for whoever is watching her, and she squeezes my hand to let me know she will if I come back. I tell her I’ll be back even if she’s not good, but I don’t think it matters to her. She must’ve decided to do this for Dean to make sure he comes home. I don’t know what she does for you or Cas.” 

Looking down at Rogue, he lost sight of her foot as she pulled it under the bed. “How do you know that?” 

“Well, I know she said ‘no say’ because she thought you weren’t telling her something, and I know about the ritual with me, because Dad told me.” 

Beth turned to leave, and he said, “We can’t just leave her under there.” 

Looking back at the bed, Beth answered, “Well, you can try dragging her out, but if he doesn’t come back, and she didn’t hide the way she thinks she has to hide to bring him back, she’ll think it’s her fault he’s gone.” 

She turned to leave again, so Sam said, “How long are we supposed to leave her under a bed, Beth?” 

Beth stopped again. “She feels safe under there. Give her a blanket and a pillow. Make sure she eats in the morning. I’ll be back later.” 

Rogue shouted, “Mom! Work?” 

Beth came back, and looked under the foot of the bed. “Yeah, I’m going to work. Be good for Sam and Grandpa.” 

Rogue belly crawled towards Beth and came out at the foot of the bed, so she could grab ahold of Beth’s hand. Beth gave Sam a look over the bed, like ‘See what I mean.’ He did now. How did he never notice that? “What are you going to do, Beth?”

“Well, I’m not knocked out, so he isn’t dead, and I’m not tripping, so he’s not been attacked by any trippy monsters. If they aren’t back by the morning, get Rogue out of here and somewhere safe. Tell her she can hide when you get there. We’ve already left it too long as it is waiting for them to come back. If they come back drunk . . . give him one of your lectures. I’ll be busy.” She was working on the assumption their connection even worked anymore, but then having said that, if she was the one blocking it from it happening on her side, Dean couldn't do that. Sam hoped she was right.

Beth then told Rogue she’d be back even if Rogue wasn’t good, and Rogue said, “Be back,” before crawling back under the bed. As soon as she was gone, Beth got to her feet and left the room. 

One of the Deans asked where she was going, and Sam sighed before he looked at them. “Uh, well, she’s shutting down her emotions, so if I had to guess, she’s going to wipe out all three pieces on the evil side of the board in this universe. If she finds my brother, Cas, and the other Sam with any of them, she’ll bring them home, but she’ll probably go back out again until the job is done.”


	34. Anyone Can Recruit

Purgatory Dean . . . didn’t actually mind being called that now that he was out of Purgatory. Seemed like it was a title or gave him bragging rights and was almost as good as ‘Greatest hunter in the universe.’ He’d gotten used to the idea that his brother and his Cas would always call him Dean, and he’d always think of himself as Dean, but the rest of them had to keep them separate somehow, and he was the second Dean Winchester to sign onto this mission. Purgatory Dean was better than Dean 2, and he hated Green Dean. 

He had no idea what to call the newest Dean that’d been hanging around since last night. Right now, he called the first Dean on this mission, Beth’s Dean or Rogue’s Dad. This newest one though . . . Broken Dean or Suicidal Dean . . . neither seemed right. The first Dean had more of a right to be called Broken Dean, but he wasn’t . . . not really. That Dean should be, but he was still okay for the most part . . . except when it came to Beth. 

The newest Dean . . . he’d fucked something up in a major way, and meeting them had kept him from fucking up even worse. Dean wasn’t calling him Black Jack Dean. He hated that name too. For now, Dean was thinking of calling him ‘the Dean without a Sam’ or ‘Samless Dean’, because he was the only Dean here without his brother. Maybe that’d change when this universe’s Sam figured out where his brother was, but for now it worked.

“See, this is what I’m talking about. It’s like a foreign language.”

Dean had gotten pretty good at crazy universe speak, so he got what Sam had meant. “Beth is going after Crowley, and this Abaddon and Metatron. Keep up.” 

The only Dean without a Sam in this fucked up family of twins looked at Sam in surprise. “And you’re just going to let her go on her own?” 

Sam shrugged. “It’s not like I can stop her. Running is in her nature. It’s what she does when she doesn’t want to deal with her personal life, but she’ll be back.” 

Looking like he thought Sam was a lost cause, the Dean-without-a-Sam turned to Dean for back up. “And you’re all right with this?” 

Well, she wasn’t with him, so it wasn’t up to him, but Dean was planning on going after her. He was also planning to kick Beth’s Dean’s ass for putting the little girl under the bed through this. It didn’t matter if Beth’s Dean had been held up on getting back because he'd been taken or whatever. If he hadn’t taken off the way he did, this wouldn’t be happening. You couldn’t do that kind of shit when you were a Dad. Couldn’t really do it when you were a Mom either. 

Looking at Sam, Dean said, “What about her kid? Shouldn’t she stay with her?” 

Sam’s attention went back on the bed before he shook his head. “Beth is more of a . . . well, she’s kind of like Dad in some ways. I think it’s why they got along so well. Instead of staying with Rogue, Beth’s solution is to kill whatever out there is a threat to Rogue, and right now she thinks Crowley and Metatron are that threat because she let them go yesterday. When she comes back she’ll be a good Mom again.” 

Samless Dean stood up, like he was getting ready to go and said, “She isn’t being a bad Mom right now. She left an archangel and ‘Sam the Destroyer’ with her daughter. It’s better to take the fight to Metatron than wait for him to show up here again. We should’ve been able to pack up and go to the bunker as soon as he left. Instead, we had to wait for the dicks that stole my car to come back,” before he pulled a key out of his pocket and handed it to Sam. “Get Rogue out of here and take her to these coord–“ 

Sam looked at the key, like he recognized it. “The bunker? Yeah, I know where it is. You really think I should go now? What about the rest of them?” 

Getting to his feet, Dean said, “My guess is if they come back here, they’ll see the circle burnt into the carpet and figure something went down. There probably aren’t too many places you’d go that your brother or my brother wouldn’t know about.” 

Dean and Samless Dean started heading for the other room, and Sam said, “She’s already gone. You won’t find her, but good luck with that . . . And, uh, guys . . . can we not call me Sam the Destroyer?” 

Dean smirked at Samless Dean and said, “I’m good with it unless you want to go with Sam the Slurpee King.” 

Looking back at Sam, Samless Dean thought it over. “That’s a tough one. I’ll flip you for it, and we can let him know when we get back.” Pulling the door between the rooms open, Samless Dean glanced at Dean, like he wasn’t as sure about what was happening as he’d pretended to be and quietly said, “You really think she’s gone . . . I mean she’s only got a few minutes head start. She couldn’t have gotten that far.” 

“Dude, she can ask God or Gabriel to send her anywhere in the universe.” Yeah, Dean figured the other him forgot about that. It was a hard one to wrap your head around. 

They were both a little surprised to see Gabriel sitting at a table in the corner with his forearms on his knees and his head bowed. Kind of looked upset. The Dean without a Sam looked at Dean, like he wanted to know what that was about, and Dean shrugged. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. “You praying?” 

Gabriel looked up at them and breathed out a bitter laugh. “If I wanted to talk to Dad, I know where to find him.” Sighing, he added, “Let me guess. You two want to know where Beth went.” Well, that was kind of the idea. “There’s a playground. It’s a backdoor into Heaven.” Gabriel snapped his fingers and a piece of paper with some kind of a drawing on it showed up in Dean’s hand. “Go to the sandbox, scratch that into the sand, and the door will open. She’s driving, so she doesn’t have to waste a call to my father in case she needs it when she gets there. Don’t go up without her. You’ll get lost, and she'd know that place blind.” 

Looking at the paper in his hand, Dean said, “Great. Where is –“ and Gabriel snapped his fingers. The next thing Dean knew, he was standing in a playground with the Dean-without-a-Sam. Well, that was easy. 

“Something seem off with him to you?” 

“His daughter’s going off the rails?” The Dean-without-a-Sam looked confused, so Dean explained. “You should hear the way she talks about him. I think he’s a pain in the ass, but he’s the real deal as far as being a Dad goes.” 

Looking around the playground, the Dean-without-a-Sam said, “Are we really going to wait for her? I don’t even know where we are . . . could take her days to get here.” 

Dean looked at the sandbox. “Well, we could go without her, but . . . and I’m just throwing this out there . . . We could wait . . . See how well she really does up there. I’m still having a hard time with the whole being raised in Heaven thing.” 

“If you’re not sure about them, then why the hell did you sign up for this?” 

“I am sure about them, but they’re all kind of crazy. Feel like it’s my responsibility to look out for them and maybe make sure they don’t do to any other universes what they did to theirs.” 

The Dean-without-a-Sam kept his attention on their surroundings, and said, “Where do you think your brother is?” 

“If I had to guess, I’d say he’s babysitting the other two on a bender or trying to keep Beth’s Dean from offing himself.”

That grabbed the other Dean’s attention. “You really think he’d do that to his family over what happened last night?” 

Dean shrugged. “He’s got me to raise his kid if he doesn’t come back. He’s got to know that I wouldn’t let her grow up without a Dad even if she isn’t mine. She’s close enough. I just didn’t get to have any of the fun involved in making her, and he thinks he lost Beth for good this time. Start thinking of her, like she’s his Sam. I mean right now you think you lost him for good, right? What did you do? You were on a bender, looking for hunts, and not really caring if you were alive at the end of ‘em . . . If Beth hadn’t showed up last night, you would’ve gone with Crowley, and you would’ve gotten the Mark of Cain without giving a shit about what it meant for you. 6 months from now you’d be a demon. In another year, you wouldn’t be able to stop killing on your road to going back to being a demon. In a year and a half God’s sister with a grudge against anything her brother made would’ve gotten out. Yeah, the other Dean is over the top with his crazy sometimes, but he’s seen a hell of a lot more than you and me could ever imagine. Other than that, he isn’t any different than us. I mean if you want to see what we’re capable of doing to Sam, watch how he is with her. This shit right now with him taking off and maybe trying to off himself if he thinks you and me could do a better job . . . it’s what we’d do. It just looks different, and seems more wrong, because it isn’t Sam.” 

“So, you don’t think Sam figures in at all with him?” 

“Nah, I wouldn’t say that. I’d just say Sam takes third after Beth and Rogue, and I don’t know . . . I think I get that too. It wasn’t just his brother turning Beth into a giant slurpee that did it. They could’ve gotten past that. Hell, they must have if Sam didn’t release the Croat virus for another year, and they were together right up until it happened, but after that . . . every kid the other Dean helped die, knowing Sam was the reason they were dying . . . Seeing Sam as a monster with demon eyes and a demon voice . . . What Sam had his demons to him . . . There’s no way they could come back from that. Beth’s Dean would’ve become that guy Zachariah showed us in the future if it weren’t for Beth, and I think he knows it. Zachariah showed him the same thing he did us. There were some differences, but kinda like everything else with them, it was a twisted version of what we got.” 

The other Dean asked him what other things were different and the same. “Uh, I think things were almost the same up until the Croat outbreak, but after that, you have to look really hard to things that are the same, like Sam didn’t go into the cage, but he was gone for a year after they got rid of Lucifer. Cas took Beth’s memories of Dean and everyone she ever knew through Dean, kinda the way we had Cas wipe us from Lisa and Ben’s lives. Eve still got out, but it’s because Crowley let her out, so she’d make monsters fight on his side of the war against Sam. They still had to go back in time to find that Phoenix, but it was under totally different circumstances. Uh, Cas was still a dick for a year looking for the souls in Purgatory, so he could get rid of Raphael, but Crowley got them instead, so he’s dead, but the Leviathan still got out. Instead of Sam going crazy with memories of when he was in the cage, Crowley made the Beth’s Dean see everything that happened to Beth when she was in Heaven, and Cas took that for him, the way Cas took it for Sam . . . And their Cas came back more anti-angel after that. It’s why he’s human now. Mine’s more pro-angel, and the two of them argue all the time. I don’t know what comes after that. I know in their timeline, New Orleans got taken over by witches, so they want to take care of that next . . . anything like that happen here?” 

Samless Dean snorted before he shook his head. “Not that I know about anyway . . . I’ve had my hands full with the angels, Metatron and Abaddon.” 

“Then I guess they will too, except Gadreel lives in their camp, and he and their Sam are friends.” 

The other Dean glanced at him and rolled his eyes before he looked away. “Kevin still alive there?” 

“As far as I know.”

“So, how does this work? You got something I have to sign?” 

Uhh. He hadn’t exactly been trying to sell the other Dean on this. “What about your brother?” 

The Dean-without-a-Sam-who-really-must-believe-he-didn’t-have-a-Sam looked at him and said, “What about him? I’m the problem here, so if you take me out of it, the problem goes away.” 

Yeah, but this guy was the poster child for taking the Mark in any universe. “You should probably at least talk to him, and what about Abaddon and Metatron and whoever else . . . You just gonna leave them behind?” 

“It’s what you did.” 

“I left before I could become a problem, and with me and Sam not there, Henry doesn’t have anywhere to go, so it’s not like Abaddon’s getting out . . . We at least got Kevin and his Mom set up somewhere safe and gave them everything they needed to know to stay under the radar with Crowley and Metatron before we jumped to this universe, and it ain’t like there was any warning. I was yelling at Gabriel for dumping Sam in a lake, and then the next thing I knew, we were outside that bar last night.” 

The other Dean took a step closer and said, “Here’s my thinking. Let’s say something does have your brother out there somewhere, and he’s in some serious trouble. What’s the fastest way to get him out of it if we don’t know where he is?” 

_I can see where this was going, but I’m not going to fall for it._

“I mean your brother would’ve called by now if he could, right? Your phone may not work in this universe, but he knows the motel where we were staying, so he could’ve called there.” 

_Maybe._

“Come on. Tell me what I have to do to get us out of here. Abaddon can kill Crowley. That takes care of Crowley, and someone has to be in charge of Hell. Might as well be her. Sam and Cas can handle the angels . . . It’s about your Sam, not mine. You never fucked him over the way I did. Don’t do it now.” 

There wasn’t much to it. “Uhh, you just need to know that wherever we end up, if we die, we go nowhere, but we might go –“

“Awesome. Sign me up.” 

The crazy-Dean-without-a-Sam had barely gotten it out, and Dean found himself standing in the middle of another fucking street instead of the playground. “Fuck!” 

Dean heard Sam’s voice behind him. “Nice. Maybe you’re where she heard it.” Turning, Dean looked to find Sam holding Rogue. Giving him a bitch face, Sam said, “What did you do?” 

That wasn’t his brother, so Dean didn’t have to take it, but Dean didn’t see his brother either, so he was a little distracted, looking for him, when he answered, “The other me said this was the fastest way to get everyone back together again.“ 

Speaking of which, the sneaky-Dean-who-now-really-had-no-Sam popped up next to him looking freaked out. “What the hell was that?” 

Beth wasn’t too far behind him. “Fuck!” 

Sam cleared his throat and said, “Uhh, Beth . . . might want to watch your language in front of Rogue.” 

Beth looked at Rogue, and then all of their attention was drawn to Sam, Cas, and Dean as they popped up holding onto each other to keep themselves upright. All three of them were wasted. It pissed Dean off straight away, so focusing on his brother, he yelled, “Where the hell have you been, Sam?” Sam laughed and muttered something to the other Dean and Cas, and they both laughed. _Are they laughing at me? Awesome._ “Yeah, it’s really fucking funny. We just ruined this guy’s life so we could find you . . . You’re all a bunch of dickheads. And where the hell is my Cas?”


	35. The Problem with Jumping Universes Is It Makes You a Little Unstable

“It’s hard to say. He landed somewhere when he got banished, but he would’ve been unconscious. Maybe he’s in this timeline in roughly the same place, or maybe he’s on that rooftop over there, or maybe we left him.” 

Purgatory Dean yelled, “What the hell do you mean we left him?” 

My dad shrugged and said, “It’s a possibility. This is completely unchartered territory for me. If you want, I can look for him.” Purgatory Dean said that’s what he wanted, and Dad glanced at my Dean before he looked at me and whispered, “You okay?” I shook my head, and my Dad said, “You want a goal to focus on to make it better?” I nodded, so he said, “There are about 5 hellhounds around the backside of that house if you want to go deal with them. Lilith is inside. There are demons watching the house. I know it’s not the same as Metatron, a knight of Hell and Crowley, but it’ll do until we get out of here.” 

_Chuck, can I have my stuff, including my hellhounds glasses and my angel blade, please._

I felt my angel blade in my hand and my hellhound glasses on my face. My Dad put his hand on my forehead to keep them in place, and then I went in search of the hellhounds. Hellhounds and Lilith . . . they could mean any number of things. Was this before or after Hell? I guess I’d find out. “Hey, did he say –“ 

Sighing, I turned to look at my shadow. “Hellhounds and Lilith . . . yeah.” 

The Dean that was following me stopped for a few seconds to have a look around before he caught back up with me. “I know this house. This is where –“ He looked at his watch and said, “It’ll be midnight in 30 minutes.” _Great, so what’s happening at midnight?_ He got that I was waiting for him to explain, so he added, “This is where my deal came due.” 

I looked at the house again with a fresh pair of eyes. “Then you and the other Deans should all take cover in one of the houses. I’m guessing that as long as they get a Dean Winchester, the hellhounds don’t care which one it is, and I’m also guessing that you don’t want to go back to Hell.” That also meant that this wasn’t too far from where I was reborn on Earth. I think I’d like to go there after I was done here to see if I could retrace my steps and find myself again.

I was stopped again when the Dean . . . which Dean was it anyway? ‘Just made the biggest mistake of his life’ Dean. Right. Anyway, he got in front of me and said that I couldn’t go in there on my own. “Why not? I’ve got my hellhound glasses on. I have my angel blade. I have my brain. What else could I possibly need to handle 5 hellhounds and Lilith?” 

Getting a little defensive, he said, “Are you pissed at me? I’m not the one-“ 

“Who just threw his life away on a whim? Yeah, I’m pretty sure you are. And you completely destroyed my plans . . . I wanted to kill Metatron, look for a book I needed on Knights of Hell in one of the libraries, so I could deal with Abaddon, and then kill Crowley . . . Now you’re trying to ruin my fun on killing hellhounds and Lilith . . . again.” 

He looked pretty pissed off and went to go around me, but stopped when he got to my shoulder. “That’s fucked up.” I looked where he was looking, and it would appear that Dean and Purgatory Dean were fighting. 

“Yeah, I walked into a room with 4 Deans fighting one time. They were all shifters, but it was pretty messed up.” 

Looking down at me, he relaxed a little. “I might’ve messed up your trifecta, but I didn’t ruin your fun killing Lilith . . . If he did, then it’s on him.” 

I ducked my head and said, “No, I meant again as in this’ll be my second time killing her. He wasn’t there when I did it the last time. I did it in the universe where we had a do-over. Takes the fun out of it some when you do it twice, but it’s something to do, and I’m looking forward to the hellhounds.”

“What are you gonna do about him?” 

I didn’t know. If my Dean wanted to come back, he would have. I told him that’s all he ever had to do. “Not talk about it. Kill some hellhounds. Stop this deal from going through . . . We could actually . . . God, I’d love to have Crowley’s bones at my feet right now and whatever we need to summon him.” Looking down, I found everything I needed on a blanket at my feet. 

Trying to act like that didn’t freak him out, Dean asked, “What are you thinking?” 

“I was thinking maybe you might want to summon Crowley and convince him to break the contract once Lilith is gone, because as far as I know, it still stands even if she dies. If he doesn’t want to break the contract, you can threaten to torch his bones. He’ll do it if you have something like that to hold over him.” 

Dean bent down to pick up the bones and said, “This could change everything for them. No seals. No Lucifer. No cage or Leviathan. No Leviathan tablet or Kevin becoming a prophet. No Purgatory. No trials. No Metatron if the archangels are still around. Maybe Abaddon, but I doubt they’d think to go looking for Cain without Crowley, and I’ll make sure he can’t go near them after he tears up the contract.” 

“What do you think they’ll do?” 

Looking towards the house, Dean said almost hopefully, “Sam’ll probably quit . . . the only reason he stuck around that year was to get me out of my deal, and after that, it was because of the seals and then Lucifer and everything that happened after that. He can go live a normal life. The other me will probably keep hunting until he gets himself killed alone on a hunt.” _How sad._ He watched me and exhaled a small laugh. “Trust me. It’s the best thing for ‘em. They’re better off not ever having to find out what it would’ve been like if this went down the way it did for me.” Then he turned and went back to the group to fill them in on the plan.

I finished the last of the killing exoricsm, and hid my eyes while the light burst out of Lilith. It was even easier this time around, because she was already here, and I didn’t have to summon her without knowing if this exoricsm would work on her. The Young Sam in the kitchen asked, “What was that?” 

I looked at the woman who had been Ruby’s meatsuit and then Lilith’s. She was dead. “It’s a killing exorcism. It won’t kill the meat suit unless the meat suit is already dead. This one must’ve been. Lilith is dead. The hellhounds are gone. The contract should be gone. You two can go live your lives.” They both looked at her body, and then the clock struck midnight. Neither of them looked like they knew what to do, so I sat on a counter and waited for it to stop chiming just in case something popped up that I wasn’t expecting, but nothing did. “All right, well . . . it’s been fun, so –“ 

_Damn._ It looked like we were going to another timeline straight away, and I wouldn’t have time for any sight seeing. 

“Is it weird if I feel like we’re doing charity work for us, but it’s not us, so it’s okay?” I looked at Purgatory Dean and smiled at what he’d said until I saw the big gash on the side of his head and the black eye he was sporting. 

_Damn. Chuck, can we just always come through with our things, like our clothes and weapons and first aid kits? That way I don’t have to keep bugging you for them._

Seconds later, all our bags were there, including my first aid kit, so I took Purgatory Dean off to a nearby picnic table to give him stitches. “You don’t have to –“ 

“I know. Help me out by giving me something to do.” 

The only way he'd let me do this is he thought he was helping me, or that’s what I thought. It must’ve worked, because he nodded before he turned his head to the side to let me have a closer look. “So, if I got my head kicked in every day, you think that’d be enough, or . . . “ 

I smiled and replied, “Every other day . . . once a week, something like that?” 

He was quiet for a minute and then said, “You have to talk to him.” 

_Who?_

“Your Dean . . . you have to talk to him. If you can’t do it for you, do it for your daughter. You can’t let him do that to her again.” 

_Is that why this happened?_

“Yeah. I told him he was a crap Dad and threw the first punch, but he deserved it.” 

I leaned around him to get a better look at his face. “Are you reading my mind?” He scoffed at that and started to deny it, so I said, “Cause if you are, I wanna know before I ever play poker with you.” 

He glanced towards the others, who were standing around trying to figure out why we were here, and then looked at me. “Could maybe think about joining a doubles tournament.” 

_Why does he know what I’m thinking now?_ “Sorry, I, uh, my being able to block things like that is screwy right now. I’m trying to work on it, but it’s still all wrong.” 

He watched me for a second and then sighed before he looked down. “How does it work?” 

_How does me blocking things work or –_

“No, how does this mind reading thing work?” 

“Well, from your side of things, it doesn’t happen unless you’re trying to make it happen. Dean used to say in the do-over universe that he had to concentrate to do it . . . but the weekend I stayed with Jess at Stanford, he used it without thinking about it. It was when Azazel showed up, and I had enough time to get a text to Dean saying there was a demon there before I got locked in the closet, so when Dean got there, he was looking for me anyway he could without knowing he was doing it and heard what I was thinking in the closet. After that, he wanted to use it more, and the more he used it, the easier it was to do. It got to a point where he didn’t have think about it at all. It just happened naturally, and shutting it off took the same kind of concentration it used to take to use it.” 

I went back to giving him stitches, and he said, “What happened?” 

_When?_

“Did they find you and Jess or –“ 

_Not before it was too late for Jess._ “I didn’t know he was listening to my thoughts, so everything I was thinking was about how I didn’t want them to look up and how I wanted them to go, because I knew as soon as Sam saw Jess it would be over. It’s just the way Azazel made it seem when he was setting the stage. He said she had to die a certain way, and I just had to die . . . Because of what I was thinking, Dean looked down instead of up and saw the blood drops on the bed, but he thought me and Jess were both on the ceiling, and then Sam saw the blood and was going to check it out. Dean sucker punched him and tried to drag him out of the room before he could look up, but it didn’t work, and she went up in flames. 

I was still stuck in the closet, but Dean came back after he took Sam outside and knocked him out, because he knew I had to have been close. He and I worked together to get me out of the closet. He had to carry me out, and I got some bad burns and a broken rib, but Dean was fine when we got out of the house. I guess maybe because before I knew I could ask God for things, I must’ve thought something, like ‘God, don’t let him get burnt,’ and he didn’t.” 

This Dean glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and said, “So, it saved you?” 

_Yeah, I guess._

“What about the thing you can do?” 

_I’m a weirdo._ “Soul mates are rare, like only 3 or 4 pairs in a generation are born, and they hardly ever meet. John said the way they’re supposed to work is the way Dean does it. I, on the other hand, can feel his emotions, and then interpret that into what he’s thinking. One time, I did it the way he can though. It was when Crowley made it so his body with us, and his mind was in Heaven. I guess maybe I must’ve been trying to find him the same way he was trying to find me when I was in that closet. I used it to talk to him and try to anchor him to what was happening in the real world.” 

I finished with the stitches and he said, “So, if you can do it the way he does it, why do you do it the way you do?” 

I didn’t know. “I’m built a little differently than other people, so maybe it’s easier for me to do it that way for some reason, or maybe if a picture is worth a thousand words, then feeling something is worth even more? I don’t know.” Looking me in the eye, he asked if I was doing it now, so I shook my head. “No, and I won’t unless you tell me to do it for some reason.” 

He exhaled and gave me a nod in thanks before saying, “Do you want me to stop?” 

_I don’t know why he’s doing it._

“I don’t either. Maybe I’m trying to suss out what’s real and what’s not?” 

“Guess it does make the ultimate lie detector . . . You and Sam should probably know what you guys have really signed on for with us, and if that’s the way you want to do it . . . Okay. Whenever I’m not blocking it unintentionally, fine. Anything you wanna know?” 

He looked like he was going to say something, but then looked down and shook his head, so I started packing my first aid kit away. “Just maybe one thing. The next time you go to Heaven, I want in on it.” 

_Why?_

“I have my reasons.” 

I glanced over my shoulder at him to see if I could figure out what it was, but he was pretty closed off right now. “Okay, but Heaven is my domain, so if I say to do something, do it, because you won’t have time to ask questions, and you absolutely cannot make any noise.” 

He grinned and said, “I like it when a woman bosses me around.” 

_Yeah, I can be pretty creative when I’m in control, but I like to be tied up more. Means we probably wouldn’t be compatible in bed most the time . . . could always prove me wrong though._

“You’ve got enough trouble as it is. You can’t say things like that.” 

My eyebrows arched before I said, “I didn’t. Can’t control what thoughts pop into my head and it’s been well over a year . . . more like 3 months plus 7 months plus 4 months plus 30 years of hell time plus a month at Cold Oak. Sure you wanna know everything I think?” 

He didn’t look like he knew how to respond to that, so I smiled, grabbed my first aid kit, and stopped when I saw something I’d never wanted to see again. I wasn't prepared to see it to be honest. I hadn’t seen Sam look like that since we cured Meg. I had to stop this.


	36. Regression

Sam’d had enough. He didn’t know where they were, but they probably had some time to take a breath before they did anything. They couldn’t start clearing these universes like this. First it was a couple of months, and that’d made them a little stir crazy, but then it was a day in the next timeline, and 30 minutes in the last timeline. Now it was daylight again, and Rogue should actually be in bed. All of them should be. It brought jet lag to a whole new level. Sure it meant they were marking these universes off a little faster, but physically and mentally they just couldn’t do it. They needed to slow down and pace themselves. Rogue especially couldn’t keep doing this. 

Dean came up and wanted to hold his daughter, but Sam pulled Rogue away from him. He hadn’t meant anything by it, or maybe he had. Dean wasn’t allowed to hold her right now. Dean acting drunk when he showed up had already been confusing for her, and she’d started yelling, ‘No Dad,’ at him. It’s why Green Dean had stepped in at the last universe, and after she saw what her Dad did to the other Dean, she didn’t really want to be held by him. 

Dean started getting aggressive and in Sam’s face. Rogue buried her face in his chest to hide from him, and Sam snapped. He handed her off to the person standing behind him, and sucker punched Dean as hard as he could before tackling him onto his back and landing blow after blow. 

This whole mess was Dean’s fault. Dean made a stupid decision to haul Beth off to another universe without all the details and knowing that Sam knew him well enough to know that’s what he’d do and knowing that Sam would follow Dean anywhere . . . he'd done it anyway, because he didn't care what happened to Sam. Sam had gotten to live with Jess again and had her taken from him again. He’d lost his Dad again. Then Dean got sent to Hell, and they went to get him, but it’d changed something in Dean, in both of them. Then things fell apart. Their family fell apart, and Dean hadn’t listened to him once over that entire year. They all came back wrong from that universe, but Sam had come back really wrong, and Chuck used that to get them to agree to this shambles of a mission, but even after they got their memories back, they were still all wrong. He wasn’t himself. Dean wasn’t himself. Cas wasn’t himself. Beth wasn’t herself. None of them could find their way back to who they’d been before that training mission. It made him so mad . . . And then Dean took off. Sam hadn’t known if Dean was alive or dead. Dean could’ve been dead with the way Dean had let Beth form connections with the other two versions of him instead of just talking to her. Maybe that meant they couldn’t know if Dean was okay if she was anymore. What that put Rogue through, what it put him through . . . and it was because Dean wanted to get drunk? Where was his brother who was the leader of what was left of the human race? Where was his brother who could get werewolves and hunters living side-by-side and working together for the greater good? Where was his brother who spent every single night for 3 months walking the floor with his daughter when Beth got taken? Where was his brother? 

He’d gotten into a rhythm and had completely lost all sense of himself when he was tackled off of Dean, landed on his side and found himself looking up into the barrel of a gun before his focus found Beth’s face above it. “You can’t be him again . . . You can’t . . . I will end you, and I can now . . . If you die here, you won’t go to Hell and have all the light burned away . . . You won’t become the greatest evil ever known . . . You’ll just go to Death’s lock up, and that’ll be it.” 

This was her fault too. She was even more to blame than Dean. Sam went to grab a rock he saw out of the corner of his eye, so he could use it to knock her off of him and start taking what he was feeling out on her, but she read what he was planning, and with a speed he wasn’t expecting, altered the angle of her gun to shoot him in the shoulder. “Ahh . . . What the fuck, Beth? You shot me.” 

Leaning closer and sounding cool as ice, Beth gave him a menacing order, not a threat. “Put the black eyes away, Sam . . . and your demon voice, or the next one goes in your head.” 

_Black eyes? Demon voice? No. No. No._ That’s when he noticed the ice blue eyes that were looking back at him. They were like that, because she was prepared to put him down now if it needed to be done. Hers went back to their normal color a few seconds later, so his must have. She sat back and flicked the safety back on her gun and said, “It’ll be okay, Sam . . . Just take a deep breath.” 

He felt tears welling up. “Did Rogue see?” 

Beth shook her head. “Dad took off with her.” 

“Dean?” 

Beth sighed and said, “It doesn’t look good,” before she got off of him and went over to Dean. 

Sitting up, Sam looked at Dean. “Did he see . . . Could he hear –“ 

Beth muttered, “Like I said, demon eyes and voice. You didn’t really have a filter,” while she listened to make sure Dean was breathing. 

Sam looked up at the rest of them, and none of them would look at him. He caught sight of the other Sam giving him a disgusted look and said, “You think you’re any better? You’re not. You know those Christmas presents Dean got from Beth to give to you? He gave them to me, because back then there was only one of us. I am you.” 

Looking over her shoulder at Sam, Beth said, “Really not the time Sam, and if you’re going to go back to being a pain in the ass the way you were after the Luxor, I’m not going to put up with it this time.” 

He quickly retorted, “This is your fault,” and Beth sighed, “I know,” before she climbed over Dean, put her forehead on his, and started quietly talking to him.

Getting to his feet, Sam got a little more demanding. “Take him to a hospital, Beth.” 

One of the Deans blocked him from getting any closer. “Look around. You see any hospitals out here? My guess is she knows what she’s doing, or you’d all be dead by now. Let her do this her way.” 

Sam looked at his brother again. He hadn’t seen him look this bad since the car accident right before their Dad died. Who knew where they were? It looked like they were in a park or national forest or something. They could be miles from help. What had he done? 

“You still on the demon blood?” 

_What?_ Both Deans were in front of him now. He didn’t know which one had said it. He went back to watching his brother and said, “No, but I can feel what it did to me. It’s why I don’t want to kill . . . maybe the odd Croat or monster, but that’s only when I have to do it . . . I let them or Gadreel do all the killing . . . or I did until I forgot who I was and grew up a hunter again.” 

One of the Deans started to say, “What does that have to do with what I just saw? Cause I’m not –“ 

Sam looked that one in the eye and sounded as cold as he could. “I like having the power to decide whether something lives and dies, but what I love more than that is making someone or something feel as much pain as possible . . . I can draw it out for days or weeks . . . and when they’re too tired to beg me to stop anymore, I like killing them to put them out of their misery, because by then they thank me for it even after what I’ve done to them . . . That’s real power . . . I don’t need demon blood to still have the kind of power that feeds the monster you just saw. I was feeling powerless, and I guess I found a way to get some power back. If he lives, watch and see what he becomes . . . Whatever it is, I made that happen.” He went back to looking at Beth talking to his brother. His brother was moving a little now.

“Who are you? You’re not the guy –“ 

Sam really just wanted them to leave him alone, so he could focus on his brother. “I’ve been here all along, Dean. I’m the guy who scared your brother enough that he felt like cutting a 2 year old’s hand was worth it to get you out of Purgatory faster. Why do you think he really convinced you to go on this mission? You think it was to protect your universe? It wasn’t. It’s so he can keep an eye on me, but what he doesn’t know is that if it ever comes down to it, Beth is the only one who can stop me. If I am dark, then she is light. I mean it’s all in her name, isn’t it? North Star? She hates it, because it’s what the angels called her, but it’s her name. Elsbeth Foley is just one she made up and told her Dad to give her. If demons see her up close without warning, it blinds them for a few seconds, because it’s like looking directly at the sun. Azazel said looking at her was the only time he ever felt nauseous. When Meg possessed her, being in Beth made her gag, and Beth was able to take back control of her body. She’s like God’s Light Warrior against the Darkness, and when I’m at my worst . . . She’s the only one that could even come close to stopping me. Right now we’re 1-1 . . . I had her in that bathtub. She had me in the Luxor, but I wasn’t expecting what I got when she showed up. I didn’t know what she could really do. Now I do.” 

Neither of the Deans said anything, so he went back to watching his brother thinking he’d done a good enough job of getting them to shut up until Beth said, “He’s talking a load of rubbish. After he comes down from an evil high, he turns into a dick. Made my second trimester an absolute nightmare.” 

Her forehead was still on Dean’s, but Sam could see his brother smile briefly and then heard him mumble, “Got taken out by a pregnant chick . . . He’s not that tough.” 

His brother still didn’t look all that great, so Sam said, “Why haven’t you gotten God to do anything yet?”

Beth immediately responded. “Why do you think he’s not dead yet . . . moron. Go sit over there on the bench and let one of them take care of your shoulder. I’m sick of hearing your voice.” 

That was uncalled for. He opened his mouth to tell her that, and one of the Deans hit Sam’s arm with the back of his hand to get his attention. “Come on, you’re bleeding all over the place.” 

Sam looked down at Beth while he passed her and said, “If you hadn’t shot me, I wouldn’t be bleeding all over some of the only clothes I have.” 

“If you hadn’t tried to kill your brother again, I wouldn’t have shot you again . . . I know you feel bad about it, but try to tone it down. They don’t understand that you’re being a dick because you feel bad . . . You’re just making it worse.” 

Stopping, Sam said, “You’re lucky we ended up in a park in the middle of nowhere, or you’d be in jail. Maybe you should think about that. We’re somewhere people actually exist. You can’t just do whatever you want, whenever you want now.” 

Beth sighed, and decided to ignore him in favor of talking to the rest of the group. “Maybe the other two and Cas should try to figure out why we’re here.” Sam rolled his eyes and followed the other Dean to the bench.

“So, you get a hard on for taking them out when you get like this?” 

Sam looked at the Dean taking care of his shoulder. “Yeah, and now that you’ve left your brother this is what he’ll become, so your universe will probably still get destroyed, just not by Amara.” 

Flicking his gaze up to Sam, the Dean in front of him said, “I’m the other one. My brother’s right over there.” 

“Well, then keep hanging around Beth the way you are, and this is what he’ll become.” 

Dean shook his head while he grabbed some stuff out of Beth’s bag. “You know last night you were talking about turning Beth into a slurpee . . . Is that the bathtub thing you were talking about back there?” Sam looked away from him, and Dean must’ve known that was a ‘yes’ because he said, “I’ve heard what happened in round 2 . . . I wasn’t sure if I believed it . . . thought it might’ve been an exaggeration until I saw what I just saw.” 

Sam looked at his bleeding shoulder. “Well, this wasn’t round 3. This was a warning not to get back in the ring.” Dean focused on what he was doing instead of answering, so Sam continued trying to push him. “I can still use my arm, and I should be bleeding more than I am. It was a warning plain and simple.” 

Dean kept working away, and was totally closed off right now, but he still said, “It is a clean shot for how close it was. No permanent damage.” 

Sam looked at his shoulder again in frustration. “Yeah. She has an expert knowledge of anatomy, and she tapped into her soul, so she had plenty of time to pick the right place even though I didn’t see it coming. Not sure what the rest of you were doing when you let her shoot me.” 

Dean finished working on the front and moved onto the back. “That why you’re studying her so hard? I mean you sound like the expert on her more than the guy she’s with. You gearing up for round 3?” 

_Not intentionally._ “I’ve been studying her since the day we met . . . At first it was because I thought she was working for Lilith and trying to send Dean to Hell. Then it was to see what she knew about the prophecies. Then it was to see if she was really of any use to us anymore, and whether or not she’d be worth enough to trade Crowley for a tablet and a prophet. I guess I should’ve known when he accepted that there was more to her than I thought, but I really thought the prophecy that said she could help me get to God’s throne was talking about that trade. Then after they brought down my camp, I kept trying to get her eyes to change color the way they did in the Luxor. I’d put her in different situations with Croats . . . It didn’t seem like it was the number that caused it, so I started doing things like making her sleep deprived for a week before I’d lock her out of her car. Everyone thinks she’s smart, but she’s an idiot. After the first time I did that to her, she should’ve put an end to our walks instead of insisting that we keep doing them, so I could get some ‘exercise.’ She never shattered the windows to get inside the car either . . . Then I found out her eyes weren’t changing color because she only tapped into her soul when she got upset by something and her emotions short-circuted everything . . . until she figured out how to do it when she saved Rogue from the changelings. And then I was watching her because she was a bad Mom. I thought she should’ve put aside the fact that she couldn’t remember being pregnant or any of the rest of us, because it’s what Rogue needed her to do . . . and maybe because as long as she couldn’t remember what I did, she wouldn’t know to have me healed if I deserved it, and because if I went darkside again, I didn’t think she’d be up to it, and I needed her to be up to it. She’s my failsafe in case I can’t control it. I mean look at what just happened. I didn’t see it coming. And who was the one who stopped me?” 

The other Dean exhaled slowly and didn’t look like he knew what to say, and then he smiled “Must be some car for her not to break the windows when she’s surrounded by Croats. I wouldn’t even do that for my baby.” 

Sam sighed and said, “You would if you didn’t have a way to fix your car. It’s a 1964 Aston Martin DB5. Parts for it are a little harder to come by now, but they’re even harder to find after a zombie-Apocalypse.” 

Dean froze and then slowly looked up at him. “James Bond’s car? She has . . . and you . . . what the hell is wrong with you?” 

Sam shrugged. “It’s a 4-seater. I preferred some of the 2 seaters she only drove once and -“ 

“Dude, James Bond’s car! It wouldn’t matter if it had no seats.” 

Looking down at his legs, Sam said, “I could sit back further with some of the other cars.” 

Dean looked at him, like he thought Sam had sprouted another head and then went back to finishing off bandaging his shoulder. Even if Sam’s brother wouldn’t talk to him after this, he had two more who would even after what they’d seen him do. He didn’t know how he felt about that. He didn’t deserve it. If anything, he was a little worried that it’s why this happened. Maybe part of him felt like he didn’t have to keep the reigns so tight on what was inside of him, because the other two Dean’s didn’t seem to find it as repulsive as they probably should. Maybe he needed to keep his distance from them a little more.


	37. Digging Up

As soon as the others were gone, Dean whispered, “Did he –“ 

Beth nodded. “Yeah, he did . . . What if I made a mistake? What if it wasn’t the demon blood? What if I got it wrong and everyone else was right?” 

He brought his hand up to the side of her face, and said, “What was it you used to say? Once his sentence was over, it was up to him.” 

She closed her eyes and gave him a slight nod. He could hear what she was thinking. It was all about how she might have to kill his brother in another timeline to keep him from going to Hell in theirs. “You can’t kill him. He didn’t do –“ 

She opened her eyes. “He almost killed you. He would have if God hadn’t taken away your brain damage, which I’m guessing includes being drunk. I have no idea how you’re saying as much as you are, because your face is still swollen up like you went 10 rounds with an archangel.” 

“Take a beating like that every day if it means I could get you like this.” _Ah, don’t look at me like that._ She looked so sad, and she hardly ever looked sad, or at least she didn’t tear up like that very often. 

“You’re better off without me.” 

“Is it the other me or the other me or –“

“No, I’m poison. I don’t want to be, but I am.” 

_What? That wasn’t -_ Great, now she was crying. Not much, just her silent tears, but it was too much all the same. “Hey, come on . . . you’re not poison.” 

He laughed when she nodded and said she was, but then she said, “Look at what I did to you. I’m sorry you ever met me. I–“ 

“You can be sorry for other things. Don’t be sorry for that . . . What do you want, Beth?” He could tell she didn’t know what he meant, so he said, “You want me? You want them? You want none of us? What do you want? No games. No saying what you think I want to hear. What do you want, and I’ll make it happen.” 

She said it didn’t matter what she wanted, but it did, so he told her that. “What I want isn’t what’s best for you.” 

She’d stopped crying, so he wiped a tear away with his thumb. “Yeah, well . . . what’s best for me is you being happy, and you haven’t been in a long time. So tell me what’s best for you, because every time I think I’m doing the right thing, it’s the wrong thing. It’s gotta come from you this time. No going back. I need the truth. I won’t hold it against you no matter what you say.” 

She still looked sad. This was going to suck. “I want to come home, but you don’t want me, and I can’t make you want me if you don’t anymore. It wouldn’t be right. This is what I meant about that soul mate thing . . . you were only ever with me because you had to be.” 

He started to say it wasn’t true, and she closed her eyes again and shook her head. “You finally saw me through someone else’s eyes and didn’t want me anymore. It probably started when you found out about Dad being Gabriel, and you knew in Cold Oak after the real me came out, but we were busy. I tried to give you space the way you wanted after we got out of Hell, but I was going through the motions and had to see you again when I knew the coast was clear, and then I didn’t tell you about Adam, and you were right to break up with me. I’ve been going through the motions ever since. If everything is black and white, you’re the only real color in my life. But it isn’t fair to you, to anybody, to be forced to be with me, just because I need color to have meaning in my life. What I want is you, but what I have to do is say nobody, not even Rogue . . . I’ve only just gotten to know her, and she’s better when you’re you, but you can’t be you with me around . . . I’m done.” 

He could feel her start to pull away, and he held onto her. “Don’t . . . What do I have to do to show you –“ 

She looked sad again and said, “You already have, and it’s okay. I finally get it now . . . How I feel about you will never change . . . never. You’ll always be football if everything else is baseball . . . but I can’t keep doing this to you. I just can’t. It isn’t fair to you . . . or me.” 

He heard her start the prayer in her head and said, “Beth, don’t –“ but she was gone before he could finish. 

_Gabriel . . . I need help . . . I don’t have anywhere else to –_

Gabriel popped up next to him and threw a dark glare towards Sam before he bent down to put his hand on Dean’s forehead. When he took it away, Dean felt fine physically, but he still couldn’t find it in himself to sit up. “She left me.” 

Gabriel sat down next to Dean and put Rogue in his lap while he said, “Yeah, well . . . I’m not surprised. Are you?” 

Dean shook his head. “I always knew she’d figure it out some day and leave just like everybody else.” 

Gabriel sighed. “Ever think maybe she thought the same thing . . . that you’d see her for who she is and leave her, and everytime you did, it made her believe a little bit more that you were only coming back because you thought you had to do it instead of wanting to do it?” Dean glanced up at Gabriel and then shook his head before he went back to looking at the clouds. “What are you going to do about it?” 

He didn’t know. “Got any suggestions?” 

“Well, you don’t seem too upset. I’m guessing you already know what you’re going to do. You do have something none of these guys have, so you could track her down using it while they do the case.” 

Dean glanced at Gabriel. “It still works?” Gabriel rolled his eyes, so Dean said, “He knew, didn’t he? Chuck knew when he sent her to me that we were gonna do this mission. It’s why he set up our connection . . . when more Dean Winchesters showed up, I’d have something a little extra, so when she takes off at least one of us will be able to find her, and it might as well be me, because I’m the one who knows her?” 

Gabriel smirked and said, “Something like that.” 

Rubbing the top of his head, while he thought about it, Dean said, “She can jam my Beth-tracker. She is right now.” 

“When doesn’t she? She’s been doing it to keep you from getting hurt when she does for a couple of years now in your real life. How do you get around that?” 

“Why didn’t it work in our training mission?”

Gabriel looked down at him and said, “You didn’t know about it.”

_So, we made it happen . . . like a mind over matter kind of thing?_

“Something like that . . . and a little help . . . Chuck made it possible, but you and Beth made it what it was.”

“What about the stages?”

Gabriel shook his head. “I don’t know. They happened before I was involved. Why do you think they happened?”

He didn’t know, or he wouldn’t have asked. “I guess maybe at first it was because I wanted her to be safe for her and then I wanted her safe for me and then maybe I guess . . . I don’t know. I guess maybe I just wanted her for her. Didn’t matter what it meant for me.”

“Like one of your negotiations?”

“Maybe . . . If I’m going to find her, I can’t exactly keep popping into my soul to figure out where she is if she’s on the move.” 

Gabriel handed Rogue an ice cream cone. “You could probably get by with doing it once. I think she’s finally stopped moving. It’s been coming for a while. Last night I had to convince her to keep going by sending her on a mission, but then the chucklehead twins dropped us in a new universe. She lost her momentum and just can’t keep going anymore.” 

Dean glanced at him. “You mean like when she stared at Sam’s shirt?” 

Gabriel bobbed his head back and forth in a non-committal nod. “Something like that.” 

“I don’t know. She didn’t exactly ask Chuck to send her somewhere specific.” 

After thinking about it, Gabriel said, “Well, I’m guessing He didn’t send her to the Himalayas or the middle of an ocean. I’m thinking He either sent her somewhere she already wanted to go or near it.” 

Dean went back to looking at the clouds and said, “I think you know where she is.” 

“Nope. I just know that when she asks for things that aren’t specific, things generally tend to work out better for her.” 

Okay. He’d give a try. He hadn’t exactly done it to get his Beth tracker working again. He wondered how he’d know it’d worked. “You’ll stay here until I get back?” 

Gabriel shook his head in disappointment. “Did you call me just to be your shrink, or did you call me because I can send you anywhere in the world as fast as my Dad can?” The second one of those sounded about right. Well, here went nothing.

\----------

You couldn’t see anything any here. Dean was sick of these caves. They were sharp and jagged and cut the shit out of your hands and knees, and all you could do was crawl through them, so you were always knocking your head against them. He got to the tunnel that led to her, and it was glowing bright like it was the last time, but now that her soul was done, it was even brighter. 

He guessed that when Death brought them back, he must’ve fixed all the rocks that had come down in the avalanche when they died, because it’s not like Dean had to dig his way through to get to the end of the tunnel. When Dean got to the end of the tunnel, he sat back on his knees and thought about what to do here. It’d been walled off again. Did he just touch the wall the way he did the first time he healed her and concentrate on where she was, or what? Putting his hand up, Dean bowed his head, closed his eyes and reached forward. 

Mostly, it just made him feel calm and at peace when his hand found the rocks, but he didn’t get anything coming through on where she was. “Where are you Beth? Can’t just leave like that and expect me to not come find you.” Nothing. 

He thought about what Gabriel said and added, “And it’s not because I have to . . . I don’t. Think I proved to you and me that I can live without you when I was gone those 7 months . . . And about all the other times I’ve left . . . it’s just . . . I get that color thing you were talking about. There’s living and then there’s what makes life worth living . . . I suck at this. Right now I’m talking to a freaking cave. Let me know where you are, so I can talk to you in person. If you don’t, I’ll just . . . stay here until you do. And I hate this cave . . . right here’s not so bad, but the rest of it sucks. I -” 

He paused when he got the distinct impression that’d made her mad. “What? You don’t like me saying my soul is shit?” Yeah, that was it. “Well, it is. It’s crap . . . I mean what the hell is this anyway? It’s –“ 

He got an idea of where she was and wondered what the hell was she doing there. “All right. I’m coming. You’d better be there when I get there, or . . . I don’t know what. I guess we’ll be doing this again.” 

He didn’t know how long he'd been out, but it looked like the sun was going down when he opened his eyes. He looked for Gabriel, and the archangel hadn’t moved from his spot by Dean’s side. Maybe he was entertaining Rogue with bubbles, but that’s the only thing that’d changed. “She’s in Pontiac, Illinois.” 

“You get anything more specific than that?” 

Dean thought about it and grinned. “She’s not blocking me anymore.” He got confused when he figured out where she was, but before he even had to say anything, Gabriel snapped his fingers and sent him there. It was dark here, so wherever the whole group had landed first must’ve been on the West Coast somewhere. It was windy and a little cold. Felt like maybe it was going to rain. She should be right over . . . there. “Beth what are you doing here?” 

She was lying curled up on her side in the grass. When she heard his voice, she didn’t even look at him. She was too focused on her hand lying on the ground in front of her face. “Could ask you the same thing.” 

“You let me know where you were.” 

“Did I?” 

“Your soul did.” 

He got closer, and Beth said, “I’ll have to have a word with my soul then . . . Soul, stop telling Dean where we are.” 

“You gonna take off again?” 

She shrugged. “Don’t have anywhere else to go.” 

Seriously? “You can’t think of anywhere better to go than my grave?” 

She sighed and said, “It’s my grave. Yours is about 3 feet behind me, or it will be. You aren’t dead here . . . yet.” 

He sat down in front of her and cocked his head to the side while he watched her to see what she’d do. “What are you doing here?” 

She picked a blade of grass and answered, “Lying here.” 

Rolling his eyes, Dean tried again. “Why are you here?” 

She looked sad again and answered, “I’m lost. I just need some peace and quiet. I can’t remember who I am. I thought I’d start with where I was born to see if I could find me again.” 

Dean felt the first drops of rain hit his eyelashes and nose. “Well, how long is it gonna take for you to find yourself, cause it’s starting to rain.” 

Closing her eyes, Beth said, “I know. I’m not going anywhere. I’m where I want to be.” 

He brushed the hair out of her face and said, “What do you want me to do?” 

_”I already told you . . . move on. Find some happiness in your life.”_

“You know we’re stuck doing this mission together now. We’ll keep ending up at the starting point together over and over again . . . you just gonna have Chuck bring you here every time?” 

She nodded, and he exhaled a laugh. She wasn’t going to make it easy on him. It didn’t matter if she didn’t. He wasn’t going anywhere until they’d fixed this. He was done with the back and forth as much as she was. He was tired of chasing her after being the one to chase her away. He wanted some peace and quiet for a little while too.


	38. Some Promises Can't Be Broken

I opened my eyes and Dean was lying down across from me. “What are you doing?” 

“Same thing you are.” I very much doubted that. “What? I need to clear my head too.” 

“A truck load of booze and strippers didn’t do that?” 

He smiled. “What? You jealous? Cause me and Sam were just making sure Cas got to go to a strip club while he’s human . . . as long as that lasts.” 

“What stopped you?”

His smile fell a little, and he took a deep breath. “In our life, when I talked to women on our nights out back when I was pretending you and me weren’t a thing . . . I never went in with the intention of hooking up with them. Mostly wanted to give you a shot at finding someone else, but you never took it . . . You know what happened when we were in that training universe after I dropped you off with your Dad and left?” I shook my head, so he said, “I thought about trying to get past it . . . with someone else . . . got as far as the bar, said, ‘Hey,’ to the chick standing there, and . . . she smiled, and I turned around and walked out the door . . . thought I was gonna get sick. Wasn’t your smile. Weren’t your eyes. Wasn’t you . . . Didn’t even get that far the other night . . . But the other me does have the same smile and eyes and is me . . . What happened in that bar the other night?”

“We spent that time talking about the killing exorcism and hunting . . . got the typical kinds of hunter questions, like what are my favorite monsters to hunt, and –“

“What are they?”

I smiled and said, “I couldn’t say hybrids, because I didn’t want to blow my cover, so I said okami. They’re my favorite normal monster . . . maybe tied with the werecat.”

He gave me a sad smile at the mention of the werecat and maybe a memory of a time when we’d talked about that hunt. “Think okami are my least favorite. You know never I never hunted one until that hunt we did.”

“So, I’m up on okami kills then.”

Dean smiled briefly. “And Alphas 4-0.”

“You mean 4-1, right, because –“

Dean shook his head and licked his lips before saying, “No. I don’t get credit for the Alpha Vamp. That wasn’t me anymore than Rachel was you, or you were you in that training life . . . right after you got your memories back, you know what you said?” He paused to wait for me to let him know, so I shook my head, and he said, “You said, you were finally you again . . . that’s the way it was for me when I remembered in Purgatory, like . . . a weight lifted and I felt okay in my own skin for the first time in I don’t know how long . . . but I got to remember the other me too . . . and it’s like he wasn’t me. Made it a little easier to get pissed at him . . . You kept your promise to me. I didn’t even remember you making it, but you kept it.”

I blinked back a couple of tears to keep them from falling and said, “You mean getting you out of Hell?” 

“Yeah, and I don’t know what the hell was wrong that guy . . . still couldn’t tell you even though I lived it, but I was . . . I don’t know, proud of you for –“

“You’re never proud of me.”

Dean smiled and said, “Yeah, I am . . . all the time. Probably because I remember what you were like when we met. Anyway, I remember the first time we faced Alistair, and what you did the second time, when he was on his home turf . . . It was better than anything I came up with to do to him . . . took into account that he doesn’t respond to torture the same as most. You didn’t let me become something I don’t want to be . . . and I know now what I could’ve become . . . didn’t appreciate that the way I should have. I remember everything Crowley showed me . . . and even though that wasn’t anywhere close to what you saw . . . honestly, I’m glad you saw me like that . . . evens things out a little, and I wouldn’t mind if you saw me like that right now, 'cuz I know we're in it together . . . And I don’t know. What I did when you told me about Adam . . . The Cas in that universe told me what it would do to you to see Adam again, and I made you see him anyway . . . Now . . . if I saw him the way you did, I’m not sure I’d do a whole lot better than you did and knowing I forced you to see him . . . doesn’t feel like it was me, because I would never do that to you, and . . . when we went back to our life . . . you were great with Rogue, and the camp . . . I knew that then, but since I remembered who I am, I mostly just want to go back there with you, so we can do it together, like we did before I took us on that training mission, except maybe stay there all time and let the other Sams and Deans deal with what’s out there, so we can.”

I’d like that. If we were doing it together, I’d really like that. I needed to finish answering his question though. He wouldn’t feel the same way after I did. “He kissed me at the bar after he paid, and he felt like you . . . like the eye of the storm, where it’s peaceful, and I missed you, but you didn’t want me anymore . . . I still couldn’t, so I told him I couldn’t and left, and . . . he followed me.”

Dean slowly exhaled, but he didn’t look mad. “What’s his deal?”

“Sam was dying after trying to do the trials to close Hell. That Dean had the option of letting him go or saving him. He had Gadreel do it from the inside . . . in secret. Metatron talked –“

Dean finished the story for me. “Gadreel into killing Kevin, and they got rid of Gadreel, but Sam was a dick about it and told him he didn’t want to be brothers anymore?” I nodded, so Dean exhaled a brief laugh. “Makes sense . . . You always know the right things to say or do to pick me up when I need it most . . . How’d you get his attention?”

“I ordered a bottle of Grey Goose and 4 Red Bulls . . . and then when Crowley showed up to talk him into getting the First Blade, I put on Ballroom Blitz . . . timed it perfectly, so the lyrics lined up on what I was doing . . . I did that for me, but he noticed.”

Dean smiled again and said, “Poor sonofabitch didn’t have a chance . . . Is that the reason we jumped to a new universe?”

My gaze went to his eyes, so he’d know I was telling the truth. “I wasn’t there when that happened. I was in a car on my way to the playground, so I could go after Metatron. I think Purgatory Dean was with him and he might’ve convinced Purgatory Dean to tell him how to come with us by telling him that if Sam was in trouble the only way to get him out of it if we didn’t know where he was, was to get us out of the universe faster, and the only way to do that was to eliminate the problem by removing him from that timeline.” 

He exhaled a laugh and said, “He’s a lot smarter than he looks. I guess, we’ll have to keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn’t go looking for Cain in our universe if he gets that far . . . He’s a loose cannon . . . What’s Rogue calling him?”

I returned his smile with a small one of my own. “Dog Dad . . . I think it’s because he hasn’t shaved in a couple days. She also says she’s going to protect him, and when he asked why, she pointed at his eyes . . . I think she knows he’s in a bad place. He’s definitely one for you to watch as far as recklessness goes.” 

“You mean one for us to watch.” He glanced up when there was a crack of lighting, muttered, “I’m tryin’,” and looked back down at me. “What about Purgatory guy? Anything there I should know about?” 

“My ability to block people is on the fritz. I keep blocking my Dad . . . They were there when Dad tried talking to me about it, and I said I couldn’t remember how to unblock him and not unblock them . . . Sam has been filling both of them in on everything about me, so he told them what I meant, and I don’t know if it’s because of that or not, but just before Sam went evil on you, I found out Purgatory Dean knew what I was thinking. I guess he thinks of it like a lie detector test, because he’s still not sure about what we’ve been telling them, but I’m also guessing after what Sam did, he’s probably a little more inclined to believe it.” 

That brought up something I’d become more worried about as time had gone on. “Dean, what if these Deans all get downloaded to you when we get home?” 

He moved a little closer and asked what I meant, so I said, “Well, what if when we get home, you guys all merge into one, and that’s why they’ll go nowhere . . . because they’ll be a part of you or vice versa.”

“You say that to anyone else?”

“Purgatory Sam, but I talked myself out of it . . . what if I lose –“

“You won’t lose me . . . Them merging won’t be a problem if that’s what’s going to happen, because they probably don’t have a whole lot that’s different between them. It’d just be like filling in the gaps, but me? My life has been totally different. I wouldn’t forget my life . . . one, it’s my universe, and two, if it’s like when I got my memories back in Purgatory, it’d feel like me and not me at the same time, a little like watching that show you watched. I’d just know the things that were supposed to happen the way you do.”

“But you guys are all important as individuals. It –“

“Beth . . . It’s not quite the same as you and your evil twin . . . I mean if we come across any of my evil twins or your evil twins or Sam’s not quite so evil twins, we won’t bring them with us. You think Purgatory Sam told his brother what you said?” 

“I don’t know, but after he saw what Sam just did, maybe he’s reconsidering his decision if that’s a possibility.”

Dean shook his head. “Nah, if anything, I bet he thinks he’ll be the one in charge . . . How’d you explain it, like what Rachel was supposed to do with you?”

I nodded, so Dean said, “Yeah, maybe he thinks he’ll be in charge, and if he isn’t, he’ll be able to put a muzzle on Sam.” 

I wasn’t quite ready to talk about what needed to be done with Sam yet, so I pulled the vial of Cas’s grace out from under the collar of my shirt. “Sometimes I wonder what would happen to me if I were to break this in the middle of a fight . . . would I get it?” 

He looked confused because of the change of subject and said, “You think that’s possible?” I didn’t know, so I shrugged. “You want me to hold onto it?” 

I nodded before I took it off, handed it to him. “Probably for the best.” 

I don’t know how long we were there just lying across from each other after that, but I think it was for a while. It was kind of nice . . . quiet. It felt safer with him there. It started raining a more, and he eventually said, “You know it wouldn’t make any difference to me if you did get it, right? I mean you wouldn’t be a monster like Rachel, because you have a whole soul now, so you wouldn’t end up in Purgatory . . . don’t think you’re going to get any taller. Guessing that being tall thing is only for nephilim that grow up with grace. You might be stronger and able to see an angel’s true form, but who cares?” 

_Maybe. Or maybe I’ll feel less for people or –_

“Are you tempted to feel less for other people? I mean . . . Do you miss having less soul?” 

I smirked and said, “I like Motown as much now as I did when I met you.” The corners of his mouth turned up a little, like he was trying not to smile, because he wanted an answer. “I cry more now, but I also make demons feel sick when they look at me, so it’s a trade off.” 

He cracked a smile before he his eyes crinkled a little, like he wasn’t sure if he should say something and then he said, “When did you know?” 

_When did I know what?_

“After we met when I got out of Hell. When did staying with me start being something you wanted to do instead of just being something I wanted you to do, or did it?” 

“I wouldn’t have offered to stay if I didn’t want to stay.” 

“But that was for me . . . you wanted to help me by telling me what you knew about the future. When was it for you?” 

“I didn’t know how long I’d be here for the first couple of months, so I guess I lived most of those in the moment, because as far as I knew that was all I really had until you said I couldn’t go home . . . I guess maybe there was a part of me that was relieved that I finally had an answer even if I didn’t think I was going to see my Dad again . . . and then you told me none of that was real, and I started trying to focus more on what was. I think maybe when you kissed me that first Christmas . . . I didn’t know why. I didn’t think I was your type. I thought maybe it was because I looked like Rachel, and maybe that’s why you’d been keeping me around, and something like that would make you realize I wasn’t her . . . and it would change things I didn't want changed if that happened. I guess I didn’t want that to happen, so I guess then, and that’s why I ignored that it happened.” 

Dean reached his hand towards mine and covered it before he said, “I used to think it was when you jumped out the window . . . I don’t think it was. Think it was after we went to the diner. Might be why I called to check those numbers to see if you were really gonna be all right when we got back to the motel. It was before I met Cas, and he told me what he did about the connection or whatever . . . I remember thinking, I don’t know . . . like I needed to keep that from happening to you, but disappointed, like I’d already made up my mind on what I wanted.” I don’t know why, but that meant a lot to me. Maybe it was because he was telling me something like that, not a shifter. Or maybe it was because he’d made that decision before he decided to protect me because of what he’d heard about the prophecies.

Dean took a deep breath, like he felt like he’d hit all the right notes, and I thought that was a good place to leave it. “What about Sam?” 

Dean shook his head before he said, “Did you hear the shit he was saying to them when I woke up?” 

Yeah, it was bad. “He’s never said why he doesn’t want to kill . . . I think it’s best if he doesn’t.” 

He smiled weakly and said, “Ya think?” Then his smile fell, and he added, “I don’t like that tally he’s keeping with you . . . right now he thinks it’s a draw, and I know you think a draw is a win as long as you don’t lose, but it sounded like he wasn’t happy with that . . . and the way he’s always around the guy from Purgatory that looks like me . . . now he’s got another one that doesn’t have a brother . . . you think maybe he’s gonna try and take me out, so he can replace me with one of them?” 

Anything was possible. This Dean had seen Sam at his worst, and the other two hadn’t, so there was very little that Sam could ever do to get them to turn on him or think he’d gone too far as long as he looked like their brother. He’d also made a point of telling the other Sam he was the same kid Dean gave those Christmas presents to that I gave him. It was like he’d planted the seed for them to see him as their brother too. This is precisely why I’d wanted him to learn how to make good choices independent of winning Dean’s approval. It’s the same reason Dean had wanted him to do the same thing. Sam had done what he needed to do to be healed, but maybe he hadn’t learned the lessons as well as we’d all thought now that he was being tempted by Deans who knew nothing about him, but thought they did. 

“I might’ve been the one to kick start this. I told him the guy we met in Purgatory was the right age and just enough like me that if anything happened to me, I wanted him to come with us, so he could raise Rogue. I didn’t think . . . I thought we were past it enough he wouldn’t start thinking about replacing me again . . . finally have a brother who gets it.“ I leaned forward and touched my forehead to his, and he closed his eyes before he added, “I mean it’s what he wanted all along, right?” 

I slid my hand out from under his and rested it against the side of his face. “I promise you I won’t let that happen, Dean.” 

He whispered, “I know, but I'm not like them anymore, Beth . . . I have more to lose. It's not all on you,” and then glanced up when there was another crack of lightning. “You ready to get out of here?” I understood where he was, and I understood where we were. I didn’t understand where I was. I was still a jumbled mess. He could probably go, but I think I needed to stay a little longer and try to work my way back to being me. “Well, then I guess I’m not going anywhere, cause it’s my job to carry you when you can’t get back up on your own.” 

I really wasn’t thinking when I adjusted my angle and brushed my lips against his. It’s just what he’d said meant a lot, and it felt like the right thing to do. I pulled back and he smiled before pulling me back towards him and rolling us, so he was on top. It was some kiss. The chill from the rain wasn’t enough to dampen the heat that I felt rising up from my core. We got his jacket off of him, but then he stopped to put his forehead on mine and breathed out, “Feels wrong.” 

_Oh. I thought –_

“No, I don’t wanna do this on your grave . . . feels wrong.” 

I smiled. “Oh, well, if it makes you feel better, it wasn’t my grave. Technically, it was Rachel’s.” 

He a laugh and said, “Good point,” before he came back to me. I think things were going pretty well until the beam of a flashlight found us a few minutes later, and we heard Sam say, “Dean?” 

We both looked to my right. Sam was there. Bobby was with him. They both had their guns pointed at us. “Oh crap.” Yeah, I don’t think I could’ve put it any better myself.


	39. 4 Hour Vacation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a sex scene in this. It's marked in bold font at the start and end. If you don't want to read it, you won't miss out on any fundamental plot points.

Dean got off of Beth. “Sam . . . Bobby. Wait.” He kept his hands up as he got to his feet. The only reason he was making any movements at all was to shield Beth from them. 

“You’re dead. Your body is in the car. We’re here to bury you, and you’re here . . . What the hell’s going on, Dean?” 

Dean looked back at Beth. She was trying to put her shirt back on, so she was a little preoccupied. “You got your silver knife?” She paused before reaching for her boot pocket, and Dean had to side-step to a different angle to block her, because Bobby moved to the left to make her his target. “Hold on, Bobby! Just let her get her silver knife, and I can show you I’m me.” 

Watching Dean, Sam said, “You don’t look like you . . . I mean you do, but you look . . . older.” 

Didn’t look that much older. He thought he’d aged pretty well. “Yeah, well, being in Hell will do that to ya.” 

Beth tapped his hand and put her knife in it, so he flicked it open and ran it across his forearm before he said, “You got any holy water?” Bobby tossed him a flask and went back to holding his gun on him, so Dean opened it and took a swig and handed it down to Beth, so she could do the same. “See, we’re both fine . . . You can put the guns down.” 

Sam seemed a little more inclined to do it than Bobby did. “You wanna tell us what you’re doin’ here?” 

“Uh, well, the guy in the car is me too, but I’m new and improved . . . God decided I had more to do . . . wanted me to get started on it straight away.” 

Looking at Beth, Bobby asked, “What, like makin’ babies?” 

Dean laughed, and looked down at Beth, who didn’t look quite as amused. “Something like that . . . me and her are soul mates. God wanted us to meet, but not until after I died.” 

In confusion, Sam exclaimed, “You just died! I mean I know you can be fast at picking up women, but . . . and why are you here?” 

Dean smiled nervously and shrugged. “The Archangel Gabriel sent me here. And, uh, time goes a lot slower in Hell . . . an hour is like a few weeks . . . and like I said, she and I are soul mates . . . I didn’t have to do much.” 

Bobby put his gun down and said, “Well, are ya gonna tell us her name?” 

Dean smiled while he looked down at Beth. “Beth Foley . . . Beth, this is Bobby and my brother Sam. The ones I was telling you about.” 

Sam looked confused again. “So, wait? When did you meet her?” 

Dean let her know he needed help, so she said, “In Hell . . . there are these prophecies that say me and him were supposed to go there . . . In the prophecies, he’s the Righteous Man, and I’m the North Star. He went there because of his deal, but the angels threw me into Hell as soon as he got there. One second I was on a hunt for a spirit in Wisconsin, and the next I was in Hell . . . We both had to be there for –“

Dean snapped his fingers, and turned back toward Sam. “The Apocalypse to start . . . That’s what the prophecies said. Yeah, I know, it’s a lot to take in but it’s true . . . the Righteous Man and the North Star both being in Hell at the same time was the first seal. Not sure when the next one is going to break, but it will in the next few months, and then they’ll all start breaking one after the other until the last one breaks and Lucifer gets out. That’s why God brought me back. We’re supposed to stop it.” 

Sam and Bobby looked at each other, and Bobby shrugged before Sam said, “So, what are we supposed to do with your old body?” 

Dean looked past them towards the direction of where he assumed the car was. “Uh, hand me and Beth your shovels, and we’ll get started if you two want to go get it . . . should still probably bury it, just in case?” 

Sam and Bobby both seemed reluctant to hand over the shovels, but eventually did and Dean waited until they were out of hearing range before he handed the other shovel to Beth. “Why the hell did we land on the other side of the country if we were supposed to stop the other me from dying here?” 

Beth slowly exhaled before saying, “I don’t know. When we were in the last universe, I thought about swinging by here for a visit to try and clear my head, so maybe Chuck thought I’d do it in this universe, because we got through the last one so fast? Maybe he wanted it to play out this way for some reason? Every universe is a little different or a lot different. Maybe he wanted you to go to Hell in this universe for some reason. It could be something totally different than the first seal . . . I mean you’ll still come back, but maybe it’ll be for something else? Maybe we’re supposed to keep an eye on Sam until the other Dean gets out? I mean you always used to say that you wished you’d killed Ruby before you died. Maybe we can, or at the very least, be able to keep her from getting her claws in Sam if he’s not grieving over you because he thinks you’re back?” 

Okay, that’s the way they’d play it for now. “What about everybody else?” 

Beth went to where his grave was supposed to be and said, “I don’t know . . . I guess I should let Dad know what’s happening, and he can fill them in on it. Maybe they’ll decide to show up, and we can explain it then, or maybe they’ll steer clear, so they don’t blow our cover . . . maybe Dad can bring Rogue by when this universe’s Sam isn’t around . . . never got that holiday you promised me we’d have after Meg almost killed me . . . could maybe treat this like one, since it should be a walk in the park, and we could start by letting the rest of the team make the decision on what they want to do instead of us telling them what to do.” 

He was surprisingly okay with that. Maybe this is what they needed. He went over to her and pulled her to him, so he could rest his forehead on hers. Things felt good again. He hadn’t felt like that in a long time. “Think we’re off to a good start anyway . . . told him straight away you were my soul mate, so he won’t get mad thinking that I’m lying to him about anything . . . And I can do this any time I want. We don’t have to hide anything because the prophecies aren’t really in this timeline, so it doesn’t matter who knows . . . Ruby might be a problem if she shows up and says she heard I’m really in Hell, but with me here, she’s gonna have a hard time proving it . . . plus, she’s a demon.” 

\-----------------------

Dean took the room key from Sam, and Sam said, “You’re sure you want your own room? I mean, it may not feel like it to you, but you just died.” 

“Yeah, we’ll share tomorrow . . . got a lot of lost time to make up . . . unless you want to watch. Think maybe I could convince –“ 

Sam laughed and shook his head. “I’ll pass. Bobby and I will be next door, so try to keep it down.” Sam started walking to the room next door and shook his head again with another laugh and added, “You know, I think only you could pick up a woman in Hell.” So far so good on the Sam front. 

As soon as they got through the door, Dean handed Beth a bucket he found and told her to go get some ice while he took his boots off. When she came back he took the bucket from her and put in on the table next to them before pushing her back into the door. This right here was what got him through an Apocalypse. It wasn’t the sex. It was him and her and the freedom they’d had to explore this thing they had. If they could get through that, they could get through what happened the last year and this timeline mission. He thought they were on the right track. He just had one thing he had to say. He knew it wasn’t going to go down well, but he’d given it some thought after what happened with Sam. “What’s wrong?” 

“You’re gonna be pissed if I –“ Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Fuck it. “Okay, I’m gonna tell you what I want and what I don’t want, but I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want. I’m done doing that.” She gave him a look, like ‘Yeah, sure,’ but nodded for him to go ahead. “I want you, like this, just you and me . . . but I don’t want . . . if something happens to me, I don’t want you to get pulled down with me . . . I was thinking if you were . . . well I was thinking the guy we picked up in Purgatory, but now that there are two, if you wanted to pick –“ 

She put her hand up to cover his mouth and said, “You want me to pick one of them?” He nodded, so she said, “Is this because of what Sam was growling earlier?” So, that’s why he’d been thinking about it since Sam kicked his ass. Didn’t make it any less true. If she was connected to one of the other Dean Winchesters the way she was him, then maybe she wouldn’t die if something happened to him. He shrugged in response to her question, and she said, “What if one of them dies, and you don’t, but I get pulled down with them?” 

He hadn’t thought of that. He smiled and pushed her hand down, so he could say, “Think I’m gonna start running things by you first from now on . . . and I forgot about what you said at the grave. If they get downloaded into my head when we get home, then it won’t matter . . . just thought it might be a way to block you from it the way you block things from happening to me, but I think you’re stuck with me,” before he leaned down to kiss her and pulled back a minute later to add, “But if you were going to pick one . . . and you can’t say me . . . which one would you pick?” Maybe it’d give him an idea of which him she preferred in their lives, because he knew he’d been at his best when he was like the guy from Purgatory, and there were times when he’d been like the crazy solo one they had now, and maybe when he’d been like that it’d annoyed her, but maybe it’d also let her know how much she meant to him. She’d stuck with him through both, so which one did she prefer? 

She relaxed a little and looked up at him. “Which one do you think I’d pick?” 

Was this a test? Felt like a test. What would she do? He grinned and said, “You wouldn’t . . . couldn’t make one feel like shit if they’re both me.” 

She smiled and said, “And what does that mean?” 

He leaned down to give her a slow lingering kiss before he said, “You take me as I am?” 

She breathed out, “That’s right,” while she pulled him back down to her. 

Yeah, he was done with the back and forth, and now that he had two dickheads who wanted to step in here and could because they were him, he needed to up his game and stop taking for granted that she’d always be there, because she might not be if he kept leaving. He slipped her jacket off and stepped back to take her shirt off over her head before he said, “I promise I won’t walk away again . . . and you can stop unblocking me now that I passed your test.” 

Watching his mouth, she whispered, “Okay,” and he smiled before his mouth crashed over hers. His hands slid behind her to unhook her bra, threw it on the floor, and then he picked her up to take her to the bed.

 **When he** got her where he wanted her, he slipped a hand to his belt to unbuckle it, pulled it off, and started using it to bind her wrists above her. Wasn’t anything to tie her to but if he told her to keep them above her head she would. He had a lot to make up to her, starting now. “Don’t move.” She nodded, and he briefly kissed her before sitting back to get the rest of her clothes off. She was a sight. It’d been way too long. He could barely remember what she’d looked like in their do-over life, let alone his real life, this life he guessed. It was going to have to be a DIY type of thing this time. They hardly had anything on them, so he told her to close her eyes, because he wasn’t using his socks as a blindfold, and then he told her that she could make as much or as little noise as she wanted before he climbed off the bed and came back with the ice.

He started by gliding it up the inside of her leg up to her inner thigh and then skipped up to her lower stomach and lingered there a little before going up around her navel a couple of times, over to her sides and up along the outside of her breasts. Every inch he covered made her skin tense, body shiver, and breaths escape her in shorter bursts while she waited in anticipation of where he went next. 

Picking up the ice cube, he popped it into in his mouth and leaned down to kiss her. Before he lost complete control, and just went with what his body was telling him to do, he broke the kiss and left the ice with her, came back down to her breasts. She needed a little more than most girls on the nipple play, but not too much, and he knew her, so he knew the best ways make it hard for her to keep to the rules, but she was doing a good job so far. He lingered there a longer and pushed her to her limits before he slid back up to get the ice back from her.

She was breathing a lot harder this time. He wanted to stay there longer and let her tongue toy with his around the much smaller cube of ice, so he did until he bit her lower lip to let her know he wanted the ice back before it disappeared, and she pushed it into his mouth again. When he got back down to her lower half, he hooked his arms under her thighs, so he could hold her hips in place, took the ice out of his mouth, and threw it across the room. The ice had done its job. He was done with it now and just wanted to focus on her. 

When he thought she might be getting close, so he told her not to cum, and she cried out again when he went back to her. “I can’t . . . if you keep . . . oh fuck . . . Dean, I can’t if –“ 

He laughed and wiped his mouth off on the shoulder of his shirt before he let his fingers take over for his tongue and went back up to hover over her. “Better?” 

Her eyes will still shut, but she nodded and panted out, “Not much, but –“ His mouth slammed over hers, and they both used it as a distraction, because he really wanted her, but this wasn’t about him. This was about her, and it was about them. She’d held out all this time for him to get his act together, and he wanted to, not reward her, but make her believe it’d been worth it.

Tongues mingling, the occasional biting, her body rolling against his in waves, the movements her hips, and his hand, and her pleas to have him let her go . . . Pretty soon the kiss wasn’t enough of a distraction, and he had to pull himself away from her and bury his face in her shoulder while he told her to wait just a little longer. He’d really planned on having this just be a her thing, but his free hand was undoing his jeans so he could join in too. 

“You can tag me in . . . if it means that much to you . . . if you don’t want to give in . . . you can tag me in.” What she said brought him back to himself a little, and he tried catching his breath. No. This was his show. He shook his head and looked down at her. Her eyes were still closed. Well, if she was still playing by his rules, he could. Maybe he could partially hand control over to her and still keep this his show. 

He reached back and took his shirts off before he kicked off his jeans and boxers. He helped her sit up, and then took her spot and positioned her, so she was straddling his lap. He told her to do what she wanted to him until he said, but no actual sex. “You already know what you want me to do if you’ve got us like this.” Yeah, he guessed he did, but how she did it was up to her. “Can I look?” 

He smiled and told her to go for it. If he hadn’t already been rock hard, the look she gave him when she opened her eyes would’ve been enough to make him that way. “If it’s up to me how we get there, hands on the bed.” He plastered them to the bed, and she started slowly doing one of the most sensual lap dances he’d ever seen. 

Maybe 3 minutes later, he didn’t think he could take much more and said, “Is this because of the strip club, because I didn’t –“ 

She leaned down to kiss him and gently let her tongue glance off of his before she said, “No, I’m seducing you.” Well, she was doing a good fucking job of it. She smiled and breathed out, “Turn about is fair play,” before she positioned her hips over him and sunk lower. She kept the dance going, but now it was full-on contact, just not sex . . . He closed his eyes and laid his head back against the wall, because the sight of her looking all sexy and available and right there made him want to reach out and touch her. He could hold off on it a little longer and just enjoy this, but not if he looked, or it’d be an overload.

She put her arms around his neck and grazed her teeth along his lower lip before she gently kissed him. The feel of her moving over him, the motion of her tongue, and heat from her mouth finally made him lift her up and positioned himself under her, so he was right against her entrance. Then he stopped, grinned, and told her to hold it. Tangling one hand through the hair at the back of her head, he pulled her back down to him to keep the kiss going, as he brought the other hand to the front, so he could slide it between them. She was really swollen. Light and gentle was the best approach. 

The longer it went on the more intense it got. She wanted it, but she still wouldn’t push down onto him because he told her not to do it. He wanted her in a way he couldn’t remember wanting her, but what she was doing for him was so hot he wasn’t going to give into it until he gave her an orgasm as a reward. Pretty soon it didn’t matter what he did as a way to stimulate her, she was moaning out muffled cries into his mouth with every breath she made. “Let it go when you’re ready.” 

He didn’t know if she was even aware of anything but the pleasure and agony all rolled into one, but she must have heard him, because a few seconds later, she shouted his name, and he felt her tense. He didn’t even wait for her to ride it out before he took his hand out from under her, put both hands on her shoulders, and pulled her onto him in a single thrust. She cried out again, and he told her to do what she wanted. She took full advantage of it, and it wasn’t wasn’t long before she was ready to go again. He rolled her over onto her back, kissed her roughly, and put himself fully back in charge by telling her to hold off until he said again. However much time it was later, could've been half an hour, could've been hours, mostly it felt like forever, and he couldn’t hold off anymore, so he told her to let go, and she brought him right along with her that time.

 **Instead,** of being able to enjoy it and maybe keep her going until he was ready again, there was a knock at the door. He looked towards the windows, and it was still dark. Sam wouldn’t interrupt them in the middle of something like this. Maybe it was another neighbor thinking they were being too loud? He was going to ignore it, but whoever it was knocked again louder this time, so Dean got up and picked up his t-shirt. 

He put it over Beth’s head, so she could at least be partially clothed. When her head popped out of the hole at the top, he looked at her and smiled. Her hair was a mess. Her lips were swollen. She was trying to get the belt off under the shirt, but she was having a hard time with it. Putting his hand down next to her on the bed, he kissed her and thought about ignoring the door again, but whoever it was started pounding on it, so he went to his boxers and put those on before he went to get his gun and checked the peephole. “Did you tell your Dad where we were?” 

“I did when we got here. Why?” 

Dean flicked the safety back on and told her to get under the covers. He waited until she did before he pulled the door open and found himself face to face with a Sam that wasn’t his brother, two of him, and Cas. “What the hell do you want?”


	40. Coming Together As a Team

Sam looked at the Dean on the other side of the door and didn’t particularly care for his tone. “Can we come in? I mean it’s not weird for us to all be seen in public like this or anything.” He’d had a rough day. He had a hangover, and on top of that, Gabriel had sent them where a Dean must’ve been buried recently, even though he’d told them where the other Dean and Beth where, and it wasn’t there. Why Gabriel didn’t just send them here, he didn’t know. They had to do something about the other Sam, and this guy was that guy’s brother, so it was up to him to do it. 

“Uhh . . . isn’t there a diner down the road or something where we can meet. I mean –“ 

Sam ignored his real brother agreeing with the Dean behind the door on them meeting there and pushed past the Dean who wouldn’t let them into his room. This place was a mess. There were clothes everywhere. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say – 

“Oh for fuck’s sake! Stop the investigation and go.” Sam looked to his right, and Beth pointed towards the door with her head to emphasize what she’d said. 

He went to leave, but something didn’t seem right, so he stopped and said, “Are you okay? You look –“ 

She raised her hands up through the hole in the neck, so he could see she was tied up and said, “Just having a little trouble getting out of this without using my teeth . . . Are you going to go, or were you thinking of staying, so you could get a master class in fu-“ 

Dean laughed Beth’s name to make her stop, pushed Sam outside, and told them to meet him at the diner before turning to look at Beth, laughing again, and slamming the door in Sam’s face. 

Sam looked back at the others, and his brother and the new one, who looked like his brother, were trying not to laugh. “What? How was I supposed to know –“ 

Cas cut him off by asking, “A master class in what?” 

Sam’s brother clapped Cas on the shoulder to direct him away from the room and snorted. “Don’t worry about it . . . Come on let’s go. Might be a while. Think I know why Gabriel sent us a few hours out instead of straight here.” 

Cas asked him why, and Dean came up with some lame answer Cas would buy. That’s the role Sam’s brother had decided to play on this team. If the Dean back there with Beth was the one in charge, then Sam’s brother was the one who was keeping that Dean in line and protecting the team from internal threats, including awkwardness with Cas, and starting today, the evil Sam. 

Sam wasn’t sure what the newest Dean was doing yet. Sam suspected that he was mostly trying to wrap his head around what he’d done. That Dean had definitely not known what to do with evil Sam earlier, but he’d kept Sam from intervening, while at the same time pulling a gun, so he’d been protecting one Sam from what had looked like a serious threat and but hadn’t ended the threat because it’d still looked too much like a brother that Dean had to be missing. 

Maybe going to the diner together first was a good idea, because Sam still wasn’t sure what to say about what happened earlier, and they’d all been avoiding it. To him, it was clear that the evil Sam needed to be put down, but nobody else would think that. “Are we all just going to pretend like nothing happened earlier?” 

There he said it. Dean and the other Dean rolled their eyes and sat back in their seats simultaneously. Cas on the other hand put his burger down and said, “Beth is in charge of Sam’s rehabilitation. It’s between them.” 

Sam laughed. “Rehabilitation? Are you kidding me? You can’t rehabilitate what we saw. He needs to be put down.” 

Cas got a defensive look on his face and replied, “And if he does, that will be her call . . . She is the one who let him live and has taken responsibility for him, so she –“ 

“Well, if she let him live, it was the wrong call.” 

Sam jumped when he heard Beth’s voice right behind his ear. “Was it?” She was kneeling on the bench behind him. Cas and the Dean without a brother, who were sitting across from him, could’ve told him she was there. Maybe he should’ve known. She smelled . . . clean, like she’d just had a shower. He hadn’t thought anything of it. Cas and the other Dean still should’ve told him. He shot them a glare and then focused on her when she leaned over the back of his seat to look at him. “You tell me . . . You’re the one who knows him best. I find it fascinating you would think that killing him is the only solution. They should too.” 

He wasn’t that guy. “Don’t turn this around on me. I didn’t –“ 

“Let’s play a game. I’ll tell you what I think his innermost thoughts are right now . . . Stop me if you think I’m wrong.” 

She seemed happy to be playing a game, so Sam sighed and told her to go ahead. “He fucked up in a big way a number of times. He has a brother who saw him do all of it . . . And I mean, damn, he’s tried just so hard to be a better person, but Dean still jumps all over his case whenever he makes a mistake . . . not even 3 days after Rogue's first birthday, a couple of months before our training for this mission, Sam was told that if he wanted to erase everything he did, all he had to do was kill me in the past and erase Rogue from ever being born. Nevermind that it wouldn’t have worked . . . Dean should’ve given it a serious thought and said it was okay, but instead Dean got mad and wouldn’t let him, and worse than that . . . Dean then decided to punish Sam by telling him that he was taking a step back, and Sam had to starting making his own decisions, because Dean doing it for him wasn’t doing Sam any favors, and Sam he just . . . he doesn’t know what’s right and wrong anymore . . . he needs his big brother to tell him what to do . . . how could Dean do that to him? Whatever was poor Sammy to do but continue to keep trying only to be set up to fail every time? Oh, but I know . . . how much easier would it be to replace that brother with another brother who never saw him do all the bad things he’s done? Oh sure, his new brother might’ve heard about those things, but hearing isn’t seeing. He could have a new brother who is still his brother, one who took him to a Cubs game, because I’m guessing all three of them did. And you and I both know that was one of the best days of his young life . . . just the two of them going around the ‘real’ Chicago, looking at comic books, and records after the game.” 

She paused to see if she was right, and Sam found himself nodding to let her know he remembered that too, and it had been a great day for him. Then she continued with less of a sarcastic tone. “His brother disappointed him by going on a bender, but that isn’t why what happened today happened . . . It’s because his brother said he wants your brother to raise Rogue if anything happens to him, and somewhere in the back of Sam’s mind, Sam thought . . . that’s not a bad idea, because no matter what your brother’s heard about what Sam did, he wasn’t there to witness him burning the world to the ground. Now he thinks he can have a brother who will never turn against him, who will think he’s great no matter what he does, because to that brother, he’ll always be Sammy. Maybe you are a target if he thinks your brother is up for grabs, and maybe you know that, so you want us to finish him off before he can finish you off, since he pretty much told you he was going to start killing all the other Sam Winchesters out there if he saw them as a threat . . . but maybe you’ll luck out, because now there’s another Dean with us who is brotherless right now. Still sucks for my Dean though, and you’re engineered not to want anything to happen to him now that you have a pretty good idea where this is going. Sound about right?” 

He kind of loved this girl, not in a sexual way, but definitely in a big sister kind of way. She was perfect for his brother. She said everything he was thinking and hadn’t wanted to say. “I heard what you said today. Part of the reason you let him live is because you didn’t want him to go to Hell and come back worse.” 

Watching him closely to see how he reacted, she replied, “I did . . . but it’s like Cas said, that’s between my Sam and I. I think he was gold in our universe minus a few setbacks here and there. Now he’s got to work harder to walk a straight line.” 

She looked past Sam at his brother when his brother cleared his throat to get her attention. “He, uh, so you’re saying what happened today is because he wants one of us to replace his brother?” 

She looked around and must’ve seen the whole diner was a smoking section, because she pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one before she slid down to sit sideways in the booth behind them, so she could blow the smoke the other way and still see everybody. “That is exactly what I’m saying. When we were at the Gate in Wyoming, Sam came walking out of the throngs of demons, and . . . his posture was so . . . entitled. He knew he was the king and expected everyone to bow down him. He made a demon explode by snapping his fingers and kept waving his arms around and killing 30 or 40 at a time without thinking about it. He acted arrogant the way Lucifer did when you met him in that future Zachariah showed you, except he had black eyes and the demon voice and was seething with anger. The three of us exchanged words, and at the end, just before he sent his demons after us, he told Dean that he was going to bring a brother back who would get what he was trying to do . . . he meant it. I don’t care what he said two years later about it . . . he had every intention of killing Dean that day, and on the day Dean went to him in the Luxor, he had his demons flay most of the skin off of Dean’s chest except for where his anti-possession tat was . . . he cut that himself and said he was going to put a demon in Dean to find out where I was, and Meg said later the plan was to make Dean be the meat suit who tortured where the tablets were out of me . . . Sam would’ve done all of that, so killing his brother to get what he wants . . . not beyond the realm of possibility. And let me remind you what he said to your brother about the Christmas presents . . . that was as much for your Sam as it was you and that Dean . . . He wanted to remind you that he’s your brother. He’s very clever.” 

Then Sam’s brother said, “I don’t get it. Two days ago he was saying that you need to be protected, and today . . . I’m like 90% sure he’s coming for you.” 

Beth flicked her ash into an ashtray and kept her attention on that, while she said, “I’m like a barometer for the bad in people . . . I bring it out in them, and it’s always directed at me or those close to me. My Sam has more bad in him than most, so it really is a struggle for him not to want to kill me. His way of getting around that is to think of me as a victim . . . I challenged him today and reminded him that I’m not . . . and of course he’ll be coming for me if he continues down this path. God fiddled around with my soul mate connection to Dean, so if Sam kills me, Dean goes down the second I do if I’m killed by something like a knife or gun . . . something external, not cancer or drowning or –“ 

The Dean diagonally to Sam said, “I thought he died when you drowned that one time.” 

Glancing at that Dean, Beth said, “He made that happen. He wouldn’t get out of my freaking soul. Death fixed the breach, I guess, but Dean had a nasty habit of going in there and messing around with things for a while.” 

Sam smiled before he asked what happened to her if Dean died. “I pass out and go into my soul the second Dean dies . . . the first time it happened was after Lucifer got out, and those two jokers, Roy and Walt killed him and Sam. I was in the next room, so after the first shot, I ran for the door and collapsed when Dean died. I guess if he didn’t come back then or after the aswang, I would’ve followed a few days later. Somehow part of me knows when he’s back even though the second time was touch and go. Anyway, if Sam takes one of us out, it’s like he gets 2 for the price of one, and then, I guess, he gets to raise his niece with his new brother unless Cas steps in as her godfather and makes sure the right Sam and Dean can help him raise her.” 

Beth glanced at Cas, and Cas nodded, like he understood what she was saying and would do what she wanted. Well, that was settled, it looked like Sam and his brother were going to be raising Rogue if anything happened to her parents. He didn’t know how he felt about that. Maybe he should start getting to know her a little better. “Is that why you’re here? You’re telling us what you want if you die?” 

Beth smiled. “You wanted us to come have a meeting that couldn’t wait. I thought maybe it was about some questions you all had about what happened today that nobody but you was going to address.” 

“Where’s your Dean?”

“Keeping the new Sam from coming here. He heard you guys pounding on the door and wanted to know what was going on . . . See, we told him . . . well, we were there when he and Bobby showed up to bury Dean. Dean convinced them that he came back new and improved and met me in Hell . . . Apocalypse is starting because of that, blah, blah, blah. I have no idea why we weren’t sent to where the deal came due, like we were in the last universe. Either that means something is really different in this universe, and God wanted Dean to go to Hell for a different reason, like something that doesn’t have anything to do with the seals, or maybe he’s still testing us, and instead of focusing on saving Dean, he wants us to maybe keep the Sam in this universe out of trouble with Ruby until his real brother can come back, so he doesn’t turn to demon blood, kill Lilith, and let Lucifer out. Killing Ruby is top of our list of things to do, and finding Lilith before she can become the last seal is next on our list.” 

The Dean sitting across from Sam said, “So, you were what . . . just gonna ditch us for 4 months?” 

Beth smiled, and the other Dean relaxed a little. “No. Not unless it’s what you guys wanted. I told my Dad to fill you in on what was happening, so you could decide what you wanted to do. I see he thought it would be funny not to tell you and just send you to find out for yourselves. Not sure what he’s doing with Sam or Rogue.” 

Cas, having moved onto his milkshake, answered nonchalantly, “He sent Sam to another planet.” Everyone looked at Cas, and Cas shrugged. “He told Sam if he ever went against Beth or Dean again, he’d make sure Sam spent the rest of eternity reliving his worst hits on another planet. I think he wanted to show Sam what he meant before things got too out of hand. He was pretty angry when he saw the state Dean was in when he came back this afternoon.” 

Sam’s brother put his hand up behind the seat and said to Beth, “I don’t want you to answer.” Then he looked at Cas. “The other Me said Gabriel was family. What’s the deal with that?” 

Relaxing back against the seat, Cas thought about it, and said, “Well, between you and Sam, you’ve always been his favorite . . . in any timeline, I think.” Both Deans snorted at that, and before Sam could ask why Cas thought Dean was Gabriel’s favorite, Cas said, “Which one of you convinced Gabriel to sacrifice himself in an attempt to kill Lucifer?” Both Deans shared a look, and Cas said, “That’s not a small thing, especially for an archangel . . . Sam also lost in the nutcracker game. Sam had to remember you dying every time Gabriel killed you, and you didn’t have to remember any of it. Sam also had to say he had Herpes.” Both Deans laughed at that, and now that Sam thought about it, he had gotten the raw deal on all of those things. 

Having made his first point, Cas went onto the other. “Our Gabriel also checked in on our Dean more over the years, because he was going to let his daughter live with him, and I know he gave our Dean advice without letting Dean know who he was at least twice when Dean was struggling with something. Except for when Dean banished him, Gabriel –“ 

Sam cut in and said, “What did Gabriel do to him for that?” 

Cas smiled and said, “He let Dean know through other people that he was mad at him and wouldn’t talk to him in person. It was like that for about a month. Then right after Dean, Beth, Gabriel, and Rufus broke into Fort Knox to save people, Gabriel sent Beth and the people to a new camp in Colorado, waited until Rufus left to go check in on Bobby, and made the tanks he’d gotten for them to –“

Both Deans sat forward and said, “Whoa, tanks? What do you mean tanks?”

Beth laughed, and Cas said, “I wasn’t there for that. I just know what Gabriel told me what he did.”

Both Deans looked at Beth for an explanation. “Well, after we got the people out, Dean and Rufus used RPGs and tanks to blow up the back and side entrances, so I could pick monsters off from my sniper’s perch at the front . . . Dad got the tanks and big stuff for us, and made me my specialized ammo for every kind of monster in there, but all of our gear is normally top of the line, or haven’t you looked through our weapons bags? We just go into army bases and take what we want now.” 

Sam laughed at the expressions of glee on both Deans’ faces and thought that if the others had said that from the start, both of them would’ve been sold on doing this mission in a heart beat. Turning to look at Cas, he said, “What’d he do to Dean after they got to play with their toys?”

Taking a deep breath, Cas said, “He made the tanks blow up Dean’s snow plow and self destruct before telling him he had to find his own way back to South Dakota from Kentucky and left him there. But then Dean had banished him right before Rogue’s first birthday and Christmas . . . Other than that, when Gabriel gets mad at Dean, it’s for sacrificing himself for others as a first response, because he thinks Dean should think more of himself than that. He just can’t lecture Dean the way he lectures Beth, because Dean isn’t his son. He doesn’t get disappointed in Dean for making mistakes. If anything, he defends him by pointing out all his positive traits.” 

_Wait. Is Cas saying Gabriel thinks of Dean as something of an adopted son?_ “How do you know that?” 

Cas shrugged, like it was no big deal. “He’s my big brother. That hasn’t changed even if I’m a human now. He tells me a lot of things.” 

Sam looked back at Beth to see if that was true, and Beth smiled. “You should see them argue. Gabriel definitely annoys him the way Dean annoys you, and Cas usually responds to it the way you do . . . no prank wars though.” 

Cas polished off his milkshake and added, “He has a tendency to tell everyone what I’m thinking. I find it infuriating . . . He did it when I was an angel too. He did teach me how to drive though. I’m still waiting for him to teach me to drive like Beth, because I know he taught her too . . . Dean said he’d do it, but he’s been busy.” 

Sam grinned when both Deans volunteered to be Cas’s driving instructors. He and his brother still weren’t sure where their Cas was, but Sam felt like he’d turn up again when they least expected it, or at least he hoped he would. This Cas had mellowed out a lot since their Cas had been gone though. Looking around, Sam thought this was a pretty good group. 

He’d gotten to know Beth’s Dean the other night, and he liked him too. He guessed he’d have to trust that group to keep an eye on the evil Sam, because they were the ones who knew him, but if Gabriel had the evil Sam on another planet right now, maybe that would do the trick . . . or make Gabriel the other Sam’s target. If Gabriel meant that much to the rest of their team, Sam would do what he could to help protect him as much as everyone else. It felt like the right thing to do.


	41. Rare, but Not One of a Kind

_Oh no. This isn’t what I was expecting at all._ “Seriously, Chuck? What did you do in this timeline?” 

The newest Dean sounded confused. “Chuck?” and Purgatory Dean said, “Yeah, that geeky little prophet is God . . . They didn’t tell me until we landed in your timeline either.” My attention stayed on what we were all looking at in front of us.

“If she’s here in the same capacity as Ruby, then I say we just kill her and get it over with.” 

Looking over at Sam, I quickly put an end to that line of thinking. “We’re not killing her.” She was a demon for sure, and they’d given her the body she should’ve had. If they’d given her that, it meant Raphael was behind this, didn’t it? I walked up to her and stood just outside the devil’s trap. All the demons she’d been sent here to kill to make the young Sam trust her were dead. We saw to that . . . without his help. Dean had given him a good whack to knock him out, so we’d have some time to sort this out before he woke up . . . just maybe not 8 hours. “What do they call you?” She cocked her head to the side while she observed me, and one of the Deans asked if this was freaking anyone else out. I ignored them.

“Yeah, I guess the best way to not get into an argument or say too much is to not say anything . . . It was Raphael though, right? I mean that’s how you got the body you were supposed to have custom made for you . . . only an angel has that kind of power, and I’m thinking you were made in Heaven, not Hell . . . I’m also guessing you have a whole soul, not a half of one, and you had your grace taken at the same time I did. I’m also sure that you’re here to do what my worse half was meant to do and push them in the direction the angels want, which just so happens to be the same direction Hell wants, and you can, because I’m guessing you’ll appeal to Dean’s darker nature when he gets out of Hell, since I guess you’re still technically his soul mate . . . so what is your name? What did the angels call you?” 

She finally sighed and took a step back. “You’re making me feel sick. Can you take a step back?” I accommodated her, and she said, “What’d they call you?” 

_Uh, well a lot of things._ “When they were feeling nice, they called me North Star. That’s why I started breaking out . . . so I could figure out what that was . . . what about you?” 

She looked at my chest and switched it up to Enochian when she asked, “Is that why you’re so bright? They made you that way?” 

“They tore holes out of me, and I am sure you know what they did to the rest, but when I met my soul mate, the holes and the tears started filling in and became what you see now, so yes and no. Did the punishing angels sign their names on your soul too? Is that what pushed you over the edge?” 

I heard one of the Deans ask what we were saying, so Cas translated, and I guess I must’ve passed her test, because she said in English, “My guess would be that the results are the same for a demon and someone with half-soul when it comes to signing that contract . . . so no, that isn’t what pushed me over the edge and to nullify it while I’m a demon would be the same too.” Oh. She knew a lot. Maybe . . . but if she knew what nullifying the contract meant, and she was a demon, then why would she say that? Demons don’t typically want to be killed unless they’re Lilith . . . and only under specific circumstances. Maybe she was trying to buy herself insurance if she thought I was going to kill her to nullify that contract by getting Dean on her side. He wouldn’t want to kill her anymore than I’d want to kill another version of him.

“Are you reading their minds?”

She looked back at the others, and didn’t say anything, so I said, “I don’t think you’re going to tell me anything worthwhile until we fix this . . . maybe you weren’t even in Heaven. Maybe you were in Hell, and –“

“How would I know Enochian?”

“Maybe you’ve been out for a while. Maybe you thought you should learn it if you know the Apocalypse is coming . . . Maybe you’re why we ended up on the other side of the country, because that’s where you were when we got here . . . And if all you’ve got is beginners Enochian, maybe Cas translating what I said to you was enough, but you couldn’t fake it anymore than that, so you switched to English . . . Maybe everything I’ve said is making my Dean think about things that happened to me, and that’s why you have the answers I want to hear.”

She ignored everything I’d said and asked, “Why didn’t this happen to you?” 

I asked in Enochian if she had Cas, and she hesitated before glancing over at the others and said she’d stopped following him around years before she got sent on this mission. It made me think she was reading Cas’s mind, so I gave him a look, and he left the room. Then I asked also in Enochian if she found the prophecies about she and the righteous man, and she didn’t know what I was talking about. It was hard to tell if it’d been because she couldn’t translate it or if it was because she’d never read about Dean. 

If it was the second of those, and she had been in Heaven, then I guess maybe her not reading about Dean is what made her become a demon. She hadn’t had hope. I went back to English. “Why did they take you? It wasn’t for the tablets . . . Was it just for this?” 

She shrugged and said, “You know how they are with nephilim. I guess they decided to give this a try, so if I die, nobody is really out anything. It’ll just mean that Raphael won’t need a back up plan to get his utopian paradise on Earth.” 

I still thought she was full of crap, because none of that made any sense . . . Why would Raphael have any reason to not think the Apocalypse would happen here. On the other hand it was hard to tell if she was flat out lying or telling partial truths. Was I this hard to read, or did she have extra help with it, because she was a demon? For now, I’d play along. “Guess they underestimate Dean and Sam in this timeline too, because they would’ve ended you as soon as Lucifer got out, so there still would’ve been a need for a back up plan.” 

She thought that one over and looked at the Deans in the room before she said, “I wouldn’t be so sure.” 

So, if she tricked Sam into killing Lilith and letting Lucifer out, the angels had brought her into this, because . . . because they knew Sam and Dean wouldn’t kill her if she was Dean’s soul mate? The only angel that would maybe think of that is Zachariah, if he wanted her to convince Dean to sign on for being Michael’s vessel, but there’s no way anyone working for Michael would go behind his back and torture someone to turn them into a demon for something like that. Michael would’ve had her killed straight away . . . unless the Michael here was a lot different than any of the other Michael’s I’d known . . . Or was she saying that the Deans in the room already felt protective of her and was letting me know that?

“It’s funny, I know what they’re thinking, but not what you’re thinking . . . You learned how to block the angels out too.” 

So, as a way to try and build rapport with me, she was saying she could block what angels heard her thinking, but she was also admitting she could read everyone else’s minds . . . What an asshole . . . making me waste all this time talking to her, and I still didn’t know anymore about her than I did 5 minutes ago. “I can cure you. That’s what I’m thinking.” 

She glanced at the Deans and said, “Why do two of them not like that idea?” 

Keeping my eyes on her, I gave her my pitch. “Because two of them know that you could explode in the final step. I’m more hopeful of your odds . . . Takes about 8 hours before you get there . . . I could cure you and have my Dad put markings on your ribs so the angels can’t find you and hex bags, so demons can’t either . . . After all the time and energy they’ve put into turning you into their own demon assassin, it’d be a massive fuck you to whoever did it, if they lost you, and then only saw you again when you showed up working for the other side . . . That is if you don’t just take off and start exploring the world . . . I’d say you’re going to want to meet your Dean though . . . It’ll be worth it.” 

She smiled and said, “You had me at it being a massive fuck you to them . . . I’ll do it.” Yeah, that’s what sold Meg on it too.

Dean pulled me aside and said, “You can’t –“ 

“I can’t leave her like this, is what I can’t do . . . I can’t do it to her, and I can’t do it to the you in this universe, because he is going to feel about her the way you feel about me, but she’s a freaking demon. You can’t trust a demon, even if she’s me. That’s why they made her.” 

He looked at her and said, “You’re basically talking about doing what I never wanted to happen to you when you got your memories of Heaven back . . . She’s gonna get those all at once. It’s going to kill her.” 

“If she was even in Heaven . . . Could be Hell. Your gossipy brain filled her in on things as much as Cas’s did . . . and –“

“Doesn’t change what I said. If she got that way in Hell –“

“Why was she in Hell?”

“Doesn’t matter . . . There’s no way you’d end up there if –“

“She isn’t me. This –“

“She is you. I can feel it.”

“No, that isn’t what I mean. I mean this isn’t like with you and the other Deans or Sam and the other Sams . . . She has a whole soul. Maybe she’s more Rachel than me?”

Dean smiled and said, “Think you keep forgetting you have a whole soul now . . . How would you feel if it was me? Would you be willing to kill me if –“

“You’re assuming it’ll kill her. I don’t think that it will. I’m standing here talking you, aren’t I, and I got all those memories of Heaven back. I’ll talk her through it. You can kick me off the case if you think I’m botching it, but let me try first.”

When he finally agreed to it, we put her in demon handcuffs and took her somewhere else, so the Sam on the floor wouldn’t see her when he woke up. Then we left one of the other Deans with him, so he could pretend to be my Dean and tell Sam what happened. 

She made it to about the 6-hour mark before things really started to hit her hard. I gave her the injection and made the conscious decision to stay inside the devil’s trap with her. Dean told me to get out . . . maybe both of them did when I crouched down to her height, so I could look her in the eye. “You don’t make me feel sick anymore . . . kind of wish you did, so it’d take my mind off of my mind.” 

Yeah, there were a lot of other things I’d rather focus on than what happened in Heaven. If that’s anything like what she’d been through, I could relate. “Focus on me . . . Tell me what you’re remembering . . . be clinical about it. Analyze it . . . are the cuts hot or can you make them go cold and numb if you think about it enough . . . Is there a crowd or are you alone –“ 

Her eyes teared up a little, and she said, “Both. Did you have both too?” 

I nodded. “Yeah, I did. It didn’t change what I had to do though . . . I had to focus on me and find my core, who I really was, and hold everything together.” 

She took a deep breath and got a determined look on her face before she said, “Tell me how you got out . . . Did you ever have the chance to kill them?” 

“How I got out is totally different than when I was able to –“

“Tell me how you killed them then.”

I slowly exhaled and went into a blow-by-blow account of what happened with Adriel the last time I saw him. I told her how I made it take longer than I had to make it take to kill him, so he’d have enough time for it to sink in that he was going to die, and that I was the one who had killed him. I didn’t hold back. I probably sounded more like the demon than she did, but it’s what she needed to hear. Then I told her I forgot about him when I was running back through to get to my tunnel, and how he’d cut my leg, but I didn’t have time to think about it . . . I just killed him and told him I didn’t have anymore time to waste on him. “And you can kill them? Angels?” 

“I’ve been training with an angel for years, so I can kill them now.”

“Will you show me how?” I nodded, and she took a deep breath. “I’m starting with whoever made me, you know.” 

Ah crap. “He was forced to make you . . . I don’t know how. He wont’ tell me. I just know he hates my Mom, so he fled as soon as he could . . . He didn’t know what happened to you after you were born. If he had, he would’ve come for you. Mine would have . . . after I got out, God told him to watch me while Dean was in Hell, and he didn’t know I was his daughter until he saw what’d been done to me. He spent the next 4 months doing everything he could to make it up to me. He erased everything that ever happened in Heaven so I wouldn’t remember it until I could find a way to cope with it . . . He gave me a blank slate and raised me again. So hands off my Dad . . . but if you just can’t find it in you to forgive yours . . . wait until you meet your Dean and see what you think about being alive then . . . I swear he’s worth it . . . everything I went through up there, everything I did to find him . . . and the pain that search caused . . . it was worth it, even when the lows are really low with him, it was worth it.” 

“I meant my mother.” Oh. She didn’t give me a chance to ask why, because she looked over towards the Deans who were watching and whispered, “What if he doesn’t want me after he finds out what I am?” 

Aww. That sounded familiar. “Well, he’s in Hell right now, so he’ll understand, and neither of you will be demons when he gets back.” 

She looked down and nodded, took another breath to fortify herself, and looked at me before asking, “Where are we now on this countdown?” 

“Less than 2 hours.”

“You want me to talk about what happened to me?” 

“You need to talk about it . . . as every memory hits you . . . you need to say it and get it out. I think it’s the only way to deal with it, and we need to deal with most of it before the last step. Try not to feel anything about what you’re talking about . . . just say it with the least amount of emotion as possible. I know that’s probably not the way you coped when it was happening . . . You were whole, so you probably had more going on than I did on the emotion front, but -” 

“I didn’t know anything about emotions . . . all I saw where emotionless angel dickheads everywhere I looked. Think you have to learn shit like that by seeing it in someone else first. As far as I knew I was a freak, because I felt anything at all.” Fair point, but I still wasn’t sure she didn’t get that from my Dean. That sounded the way he would explain it to somebody. I mean if she had so much hatred for her mother, there had to be a reason for it.

She was still rattling on about the torture she went through an hour later. I’d coach through some things or tell her what I did when things that happened to her had happened to me, but mostly it was her doing all the talking. Dean got my attention to let me know it was time for her next shot. So, I took the syringe and drew my blood, and I guess right around the time I finished injecting her with it is roughly when he noticed that at some point, I’d taken her handcuffs off, because he picked me up under the arms and dragged me out of the devil’s trap. 

He helped me get steady on my feet. He wasn’t pissed off . . . yet. He’d just acted without thinking at me being put into a dangerous situation, so when he started to say, “Beth, you can’t –“ he wasn’t yelling. He didn’t get to finish the rest, because that’s when she started flipping out. Her knees hit the ground, and she crawled to the edge of the circle, crying and begging him to give me back the whole way. He didn’t know what to do. I didn’t really know what to do. Purgatory Dean pushed me back towards her to make her stop crying. She clung to my legs until I sunk down to my knees to give her a hug, and then she latched on and wouldn’t let go while she cried into my neck.

“Is this supposed to happen?” 

I heard my Dean answer Purgatory Dean. “I don’t know . . . They all cry when they’re being cured . . . never let ‘em get close enough to hug it out though.” 

Yeah, but it’d worked, hadn’t it? She’d calmed right down. I didn’t know if she’d been in Hell or if she’d been in Heaven all this time. I did know this was the first hug she’d maybe ever gotten, or in at least so long, she forgot what they felt like. And if she had been in Hell, how did I know she hadn’t just been sent there the way Dean had in our last life? What if she was like me and had gone out exploring and just randomly wandered into Hell one day? And why did she have her own body if she’d been in Hell? Maybe the angel’s did take her, but she hadn’t had any hope the way I’d had when it came to finding Dean. I didn’t really know anything about her, but I’d sure like to find out what happened to her, because it could’ve happened to me. “It’s okay. I’ll take care of you as long as you need . . . I won’t leave you until you’re ready.” 

“What if I’m never ready?” 

“Nah, I’m annoying. You’ll be ready before you know it.” 

She whispered, “I don’t want to be alone anymore,” and I said she wouldn’t be, so she asked, “Can I come with you?” 

_Hell no._ I didn’t know anything about her. What if she was seriously not a good person and messed up and made me that way. Besides, her Dean needed her, and he was actually supposed to get her, just as a demon, apparently. Maybe that’s what would have pushed him towards the mark in this timeline. I didn’t know what was really happening in this universe. 

“What about your Dean? What about your Sam? Who is going to look after your Sam until your Dean gets back? Who will look after them after he does? Sure, they could look after each other, but . . . they’re going to need a hand, or we wouldn’t be doing this mission at all. You can protect them from themselves and each other and demons and angels and monsters and spirits.” 

She went quiet again for about 5 minutes and then said, “I don’t know how to do any of that . . . I actually didn’t know what I was going to do with those demons in Sam’s room. I had knife they gave me before they dropped me off and was thinking I’d just wing it . . . element of surprise and all that.” 

“Well, knowledge is more powerful than weapons, and you’ll know a lot more about what these cosmic forces are planning than they will. That could be a really big help to them. And . . . I already said I’d train you how to kill angels, so I guess I’ll just train you the way I was trained . . . I went on my first hunt after about . . . 3 months.” 

She held me a little tighter and said, “Will you stay until he gets out? If he doesn’t like me, then maybe I can go with you.” 

I looked at Dean, who was thinking it over, and he must’ve thought that we’d planned on being here for 4 months anyway to keep an eye on Sam, so he shrugged. “We’ll stay that long . . . but I’m thinking that if you stay with Sam and take care of him, that’ll mean a whole lot to him . . . You wanna tell me your name yet?” 

She shook her head. “No, I was thinking I’d see whether or not I make it out of this first . . . It’s easier to lose something if it doesn’t have a name.” That was remarkably considerate.

“You wanna go back to going over what you’re experiencing now?” She sighed and gave me a nod before she sat back on her heels, so she could focus on me while she started again.

\--------------------

Okay this was it, the 8th and final injection. Everybody was there now, because the newest and saddest Dean of our group had found a way to ditch Sam, I guess. He’d thought maybe the younger Sam had been catching onto him not being the Dean that Sam had been talking to since we met him by the grave. Keeping our secret from the younger Sam wasn’t going to be an option anymore if this worked with her. We’d have to tell him his brother was in Hell, but would be back in a few months, and that he had to help us look after this poor woman until he got back . . . I really wish she’d pick a name. 

Dean came up behind me and said, “Are you sure this is gonna work?” 

_Nope._

“Maybe we shouldn’t do it. I mean . . . she seems okay now . . . never actually seemed all that bad, and she did just walk right into a devil’s trap after she saw the others do the same thing, because she thought she’d be able to get out for some reason . . . she’s not a very experienced demon.” 

I looked back at him, and he said, “I’m just saying maybe we should think about this.” 

Looking over my shoulder at him, she said, “I’m ready . . . worst case scenario, I make it and have to feel everything, right?” 

She was dead serious. I laughed, and Dean muttered, “That’s one way to look at it,” before he looked at me and said, “Okay, all right . . . I get it . . . but I’m not gonna be happy about it if you blow her up . . . I mean, she’s you, right . . . wouldn’t be happy if you blew up either . . . I mean, I wouldn’t know you had, cause I’d blow up too, but . . . just get on with it.” 

Looking at her again, I said, “It might feel like you’re exploding from the inside out, but . . . what I want you to do is focus on holding onto everything together as tight as you can. Okay?” 

She nodded and closed her eyes before she took a couple of deep breaths and then nodded that she was ready. _Chuck, don’t let her blow up, and don’t you dare give her any of my soul._ Quickly cutting the palm of my hand, I said the incantation and slammed my hand over her mouth. There was a massive explosion of light that came out of her, and then she . . . collapsed onto the ground. Well, fuck.


	42. Something Is Wrong with Her

Dean put his hands on top of his head and shook it. He told her this would happen. “What’s she doing?” Looking back over his shoulder to see what the Purgatory guy had meant, it looked like Beth was trying to coach the other her into starting her heart. 

“She thinks if the demon Beth was in Heaven, then maybe she never learned how to be in her body as a human or how to breathe or get her heart started . . . or how to open her eyes. I guess because she didn’t when she got put in her body.” 

Purgatory Dean said, “You’re kidding, right? She barely tried CPR.” 

He wished he was, but he wasn’t, so he laughed. “No, that’s what she’s thinking . . . I don’t know if she’s right or not. Guess we’ll find out.” 

About 5 minutes later, he went over to tell Beth it was over. Crouching down next to Beth, he opened his mouth and then stopped before looking down at the one on the ground. “I can hear her. She’s still in there.” Pushing Beth out of the way, he felt for a pulse Beth said wasn’t there. She was right about that, so he started chest compressions. 

“Dean, you’re going to hurt her. She needs to figure it out herself . . . She can do this.” He gave her a look before he went to start chest compressions again, but Beth tackled him onto his side saying, “No . . . I’ve got this.” She went back to trying to talk to her, and Dean went over and picked her up, so he could hand her off to one of the others before going back to the one on the ground and ignored whatever Beth was saying. He knew she bought into that mind over matter stuff a lot, but that would only get you so far. 

He finally had enough of it and told her to shut up, because he couldn’t hear. “You wouldn’t have to hear if you gave her some fucking time.” 

Dean looked back at Beth and said, “Not everyone can start their hearts using the same freaky thing that kept them from going demon. Clearly she doesn’t have it . . . back off and let me do this.” 

Then he went back to the one on the ground, and not even a couple of seconds later, the one on the ground opened her eyes and looked around, before she started saying something to him. “What’s she –“

He heard Beth say, “She wants to know why her chest hurts . . . She thought she was done being tortured.” 

Cas laughed and said, “No, she didn’t. She wants to know where her sister is.” 

As soon as the one on the ground caught sight of Beth coming back over to her, she smiled and lifted her hand towards her, so Beth could hold it. “Saoirse?” 

Beth smiled and said, “Not bad . . . It means liberty or freedom. I suppose that fits.” 

Then the one on the ground said something else in another language, and Beth said, “Foley,” so the one on the ground said, “Saoirse Foley,” and Beth said, “Guess we’re going for the full-Irish name, huh?” 

The one on the ground nodded, and looked towards Dean, so Beth said, “Dean, this is Saoirse Foley.” Saoirse frowned before she shook her head, and Beth sighed. “She wants me to apologize for yelling at you.” 

Dean looked at the one on the ground and that seemed to make her happy. “How’d you know that’s what she was thinking?”

“Are you kidding me? Do you know how many times I’ve seen that same look in the mirror? I know the ‘tell Dean you’re sorry’ look.” Then Beth started talking to Saoirse probably in angel again. Saoirse shook her head a couple of times, so Beth laid down next to her and demonstrated how to roll over onto her side. He guessed his job here was done? 

“What are they doing now?” Dean looked over his shoulder and said, “I guess she’s teaching her how to roll over? I don’t know . . . think it’s going to take a lot longer than 3 months to get her ready to start hunting if her Dad doesn’t get involved.” 

Purgatory Sam said, “So . . . she’s not a demon anymore?” 

Dean shook his head, and added, “No, and she’ll probably be really clingy, or at least that’s the way Meg was with me at first. I don’t really know what to expect with this one . . . She’s Beth, but she’s not Beth. I’ve never seen Beth break down the way she did . . . the most Beth ever does when it comes to crying is a couple of tears at most. That’s when she’s really upset, and it took her at least a year of being on Earth to be able to do that much. When I met her, there was only half of her, so . . . whatever way she is now she made herself that way . . . I’m guessing that Saoirse is the real Beth?” 

He heard Beth said, “No, I’m the real Beth,” and Sam laughed. Yeah, she was making herself look like an idiot right now with the way she was acting. 

That’s when Purgatory grabbed Dean by the arm and dragged him away from the group. “I’ve seen you two together . . . You don’t treat Beth the way I just saw you treat her for the last 5 minutes. You need to fix it.”

“What are you –“

“You manhandled her out of there, like she was the enemy, and she’s not . . . in case you didn’t notice, the one on the ground played you. She could breath as soon as you got involved . . . You just didn’t notice, because you were to busy trying to hear what she was thinking instead of looking at what was right in front of you . . . And freaky soul thing that kept her from being a demon? When the hell did that become a bad thing? ‘The real Beth?’ The way you said it . . . The real Beth is pretty freaking awesome from what I can tell, and the look you just threw her for trying to teach the other one how to do shit on her own instead of relying on us to do it for her . . . You just made things right with her. Don’t fuck it up now, because there’s another one.”

Dean looked back over his shoulder at Beth. “Think it’s cause the other one was dead, or . . . I don’t know . . . You really think the one on the ground played me?” He looked back over at Purgatory Dean, and Purgatory Dean gave him a look, like ‘Yeah, I just said that, didn’t I?’ “And she made Beth apologize to me when Beth was right . . . You think I need to keep an eye on her?”

“I would . . . Beth’s been saying all along, she doesn’t know if this new one was made a demon in Hell or Heaven . . . I know she’s talking to Beth in angel right now, but . . . it could be an act . . . and maybe she went to Hell, like Beth said.”

Dean threw Purgatory Dean a look. “You mean the way Beth thought, cause I know she didn’t say most of what she was saying when she interrogated her.”

Purgatory Dean gave him an awkward shrug, like, ‘yeah,’ and Dean sighed. “Why do you care if I fix 5 minutes of me being a dick?”

Purgatory Dean watched Beth trying to teach the other one how to crawl and smiled. “Cause maybe I want to see one of us have something like you have that works . . . and you told me to kick your ass to keep from being an idiot, so that’s what I’m gonna do.” Dean guessed that made sense. Felt kind of like he had back up on this now. Not that Sam hadn’t tried at different times to do the same thing, but maybe it kind of felt like the way Adam used to tell Dean when he was being a dumbass . . . made want to listen even more when it was him who was saying it.

\--------------------

Well, that’d sucked . . . having to come clean with the Sam in this universe. He’d genuinely wanted to believe his brother was back. But he did have three guys standing around saying that they’d been where his brother was right now, so maybe he’d buy that his brother would be all right even though all three of them knew it’d change him forever. They’d also said they’d stick around to help him out until his brother got back. 

Having Saoirse thrown into the mix had confused Sam and maybe intrigued him enough that it took his mind off of things with his brother for the time being. Dean wasn’t really sure what to make of her, and he was starting to think that Beth spending so much time with her wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Just a feeling he had, and he wished they’d stop speaking in Enochian all the time. Cas was the only one who could understand anything they were saying. Dean didn’t know if Beth was still testing her or if Beth was getting more and more used to the idea that Saoirse was from Heaven, and if Saoirse wasn’t, he didn’t want Beth letting her guard down around her.

It took all of a week for Dean to want to kick Saoirse out. She wasn’t Beth. She wasn’t Rachel. She might have a whole soul, but she wasn’t who Beth would’ve been with a whole soul either. There was something seriously wrong with her. She was really clingy with Beth, and there’d been more than a few times when Beth had come back from training Saoirse with a black eye or busted lip. That shouldn’t be happening. Beth should be able to protect herself from someone who just started relearning or fake relearning how to walk a week ago. 

When he asked Beth about it, she wouldn’t say, so he and Purgatory Dean followed them, and that particular morning, nothing had gone wrong. Beth had gone over target practice with her and all the rest, nothing too hard. Even her hand-to-hand training had been light, like the stuff she used to do with Paige in their do-over life, but then on the jog back, Saoirse acted like she twisted her ankle, and when Beth came back to have a look, and was talking about wrapping it for her, she sucker punched Beth right in the eye. Took everything he had not to do something about it right then and there, but Beth glanced in his and Purgatory Dean’s direction to let them know she knew they were there. “Why didn’t she say anything?”

Dean looked at the Dean on his shoulder and said, “She wasn’t sure I’d believe her . . . She wanted me to see it for myself.”

“You didn’t fix it?”

“I did . . . mostly. All it takes is one thing, and it sticks with her.”

Purgatory Dean laughed. “Hey, maybe you should bring up what Lucky Dean heard you say to Gabriel about you making your soul mate thing stronger . . . makes you a freak too.”

Dean threw him a look, and then smiled briefly. “Lucky Dean?”

Purgatory Dean shrugged and said, “Well, yeah, I mean if it weren’t for us, he would’ve gotten the Mark, and now he’s got a purpose . . . gets to go off to play with tanks in your universe and help kick my ass to make sure I don’t fuck things up with Sam the way he did, and he might have fucked over his brother, but he didn’t fuck over my brother, so his brother gets to live a happy life without him, or that’s the way he sees it, and he still gets to talk to a Sam that doesn’t hate him. And . . . I hate to admit it, but I think he’s Rogue’s favorite too . . . after you.”

Hadn’t noticed that. Dean turned to watch Beth and Saoirse run back to the motel after Beth gave Saoirse shit for punching her. “Yeah, well . . . she wants to protect him, because she feels sorry for him. She’s just like her Mom.”

“Smart, cause –“

“No, I mean she’s got a bleeding heart for . . . us . . . nothing we do will change that. Still just as unconditional as it was when Beth offered us those cookies for Christmas, and she’s passed it onto Rogue.” He glanced at the other Dean, and the other Dean looked uncomfortable, so Dean grinned and said, “So, what are we gonna do about Saoirse? Maybe you or the other –“

“Nah, I mean she tried, but we both shot her down. Beth said we had to . . . something about how it wouldn’t be right, because the Dean from this universe is who Saoirse is supposed to be with . . . But I definitely heard her think that it was because there’s no way in hell Saoirse is coming with us . . . She’s probably right about that. Think we’re just about figuring this out, or we will until your brother comes back. The last thing we need is to add a bunny boiler to the team.”

Dean laughed. “Bunny boiler?”

“Yeah, I don’t know . . . there’s definitely something Fatal Attraction about her . . . probably why I actually listened when Beth said we should turn her down, cause there’s no way I would have under normal circumstances.” 

Looking over his shoulder, Dean said, “You know you’re listening to what Beth thinks a lot . . . would’ve thought it’d freak you out.” 

“Can’t help it . . . started off wanting to know what me and Sam had signed on for with you guys, and now I can’t shut it off.”

“You can if you want.”

“That what you do?”

No, it’s not something he ever did in this life. “Honestly, I never did in our real life, but I could in that crappy working holiday life we had . . . not even sure if I remember how, or if I really did and if it was just something Beth blocked me from doing . . . Thought you and your brother were supposed to be working on going to Death’s lock up together in our universe. The more you do it, the less chance there is of that happening.”

Purgatory Dean shrugged and said, “If your brother makes it back to your universe, then sure.”

“You’re not thinking about taking him out to create a spot for –“

“No, but I think if things don’t change, Beth will take him out, or he’ll take her out, or you out, and as much as we like Rogue, we’re not her parents . . . don’t think any of us would let that happen.”

Dean shook his head. “You wouldn’t do it . . . There’s no way –“

“Wouldn’t be any different than killing a shifter version of Sam, or at least not to me.” Dean watched Purgatory Dean to see how serious he was being, and he looked pretty damn serious. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Not as pissed off or worried as he probably should. Maybe a little like this gave him an out, like it meant Beth wouldn’t have to be the one to do it, because he didn’t want to hold it against her, and like he wouldn’t have to do it and have it change something fundamental to who he was.

When Dean got back through the door of the motel, the first thing he noticed was Cas kicking Saoirse out of the room. Maybe Cas’d had enough of her too. Cas turned to look at Dean and said, “You should talk to Beth. She is very upset,” before he looked at Purgatory Dean and indicated that they should leave Dean and Beth alone. 

As soon as the room was cleared, Dean knocked on the bathroom door. “Is she gone? I might kill her, and I don’t want to do that.”

“Yeah, she’s gone. What’s she do?”

Beth opened the door, and stuck her head out before handing him her iPod that he’d given her the first Christmas after they met. He typed in the password, and held his breath. He knew what was supposed to be here, because he’d put a lot if not most of it on here, stuff he knew she liked and didn’t have time to put on here herself, so he used to surprise her with it . . . until the Apocalypse, and then he started getting her records, but she’d kept this. She used to put it on when she went on missions out in the trucks and always kept it in her clothes bag. Sometimes she hooked it up to a generator at a camp if she wanted to listen to an album she didn’t have. “She deleted everything?!” 

Beth looked down at it. “Yeah, and put all kinds of her crap on it.” This was one of Beth’s things, maybe it wasn’t as important to her as her watch, angel blade, or first aid kit, but it was up there with those. “Well, we’ll just delete her stuff, and I’ll fix it . . . put what’s supposed to be there back on it . . . Is this –“ Dean glanced at her and said, “Is it starting with her? I mean is she going to –“

“Keep trying to take things from me that are important to me until she eventually wants to kill me? I don’t know . . . I don’t think that’s what this is, but I honestly don’t know, and at the same time, I don’t feel like I can leave her. She needs help, and she genuinely seems to need it from me. And I feel like I need to fix her because if she’s like this when he gets out, then –“ 

“He’ll be fine. I know you feel guilty about not getting him in Hell, but he’ll live, and he’ll figure out what to do with her brand of crazy. It’s not on you to fix all of us, and what about Rogue? What if –“

Beth abruptly cut him off. “Dad’s keeping her as far away from Saoirse as possible.” 

Would’ve been good if she’d filled him in on that. “For how long?” 

Beth sighed and said, “Until we tell him she’s not around. That’s why he took off with her the first day we brought Saoirse back and hasn’t brought her back since.”

He knew she was on a trip around the world with Gabriel, but he hadn't known she wouldn't be coming back the whole 4 months. “Did you –“

“Mutual decision between both of us . . . I should’ve told you. I didn’t think about it. Have kind of had my hands full. I’m sorry.” She was still trying to figure out how to untangle 3 different lifetimes and be herself. As far as he was concerned, she was herself. She seemed the calmest when she was with Rogue these days. It gave him an idea.

Dean pulled her into a hug and said, “How about I deal with things around here today, and you go spend the day with Rogue?”

“What about –“

“I’ll go tomorrow, and . . . I don’t think you’re anymore of a freak than me . . . I mean, I did figure out how to heal you doing that whole mind over matter thing, so . . . “ Beth laughed briefly, so he added, “And if you call your Dad to pick you up, it’ll give me a chance to fix your iPod by tonight.” 

Holding him a little tighter, Beth quietly said, “Thank you, Dean. I don’t know when the last time I said it was, but thanks.” A few seconds later, she was gone, and he had to figure out what to do to keep from being bored out of his mind. Maybe they needed to find a hunt. It’s just that most hunts in the real world seemed boring now. He missed his universe. It was never boring.

He and the other Deans decided to go out with Sam to see how the whole triplet thing worked on picking up women. He was still a wingman, which worked for him, but the other Deans both struck out. They shouldn’t have. He was keeping an eye on them . . . almost seemed like they were heading into Cas having a thing for Beth territory. As long as they didn’t do anything about it, he wouldn’t say anything. Cas didn’t act the way he used to act around her. Maybe the other two Deans would eventually turn out the same way . . . but then Cas didn’t have part of her soul anymore. Nah, both of them had a screwed up idea of what it was like to be with a woman. It was probably all right.

When he got back, Beth was back too. She was already in bed. He was looking forward to curling up next to her . . . right up until he threw the covers back and saw what she was wearing. She only ever wore nothing, when she was playing games. What kind of game did she want to play tonight? Maybe she was going to see who broke first? Guess he’d find out. Wouldn’t be him. He wondered what the terms were going to be. Maybe it’d be to see who got to spend tomorrow with Rogue. He definitely wasn’t giving in on it first. He’d barely had a chance to see Rogue since he came back drunk and scared her . . . maybe Sam had gone overboard with it, but he’d been right to hold her back from him.

It looked like Beth wasn’t even going to make him work for it. He smiled when he felt her arm wrap around him. Her hand slid under his shirt, so he rolled to face her. If this is the way she wanted to start welcoming him to bed, he’d be more than all right with that. It took about 2 minutes for him to realize that something was off. She felt the same when he kissed her. Her body felt the same. She looked the same, but she didn’t sound the same . . . she seemed more vocal about the wrong things, and what she was thinking was definitely wrong. Pulling back, he rolled to flip on the lights and immediately demanded she show him her arm. “What? Why would I –“

“Show me your goddamn arm!” She showed him her left, and he batted it away, so he could look at her right . . . it wasn’t there. It was the one thing that never got healed by him or angels in any timeline . . . that scar she got from that damn icicle. “Get out of my fucking bed, Saoirse . . . Get out of the fucking motel. You’re done!” She started bitching and moaning, and the next thing knew the motel door was opening, and his whole world came crashing down in about 2 seconds. “Beth, it isn’t what it looks like. I –“

Her attention wasn’t on him. It was on Saoirse. “Did you ask her to touch you, Dean?”

He quickly shook his head, and then he had to scramble out of the way as she grabbed Saoirse by the hair, dragged her to the edge of the bed, and picked Saoirse up under the arms after she landed on the ground. “We’re just gonna have a word about how you don’t touch people when they don’t want to be touched. I’m sick and tired of women thinking they can do that to you, and this is the worst one yet . . . She won’t do it again. You didn’t do anything wrong . . . stop feeling like I cut out your heart with a spoon.” Then she dragged Saoirse towards the door. 

Saoirse was just letting her do it . . . No kicking. No screaming. If anything, it looked like she was getting a reaction out of Beth she wanted. She looked up at Dean and almost smiled before she said, "I can check you off my list . . . just have to rule out Cas and your daughter, and -

“Uh, Beth –“ 

"I'm taking her to her mother. She can deal with her." And just like that Saoirse went from going peacefully to screaming and kicking, as Beth picked up a t-shirt out of her bag on the way past it to the door and threw it at Saoirse before dragging her outside and slamming the door shut behind them.


	43. Crisis of Conscience

“No, no, no, no! You can’t . . . You can’t take me to her . . . She’ll hurt you . . . She’ll hurt both of us. She’s evil, Beth . . . You can’t take me there!”

I dropped Saoirse as I unlocked the car I’d been driving this last week, and by the time I turned to pick her back up, she was on her knees and begging me to hear her out. Taking my jacket off, I said, “Put my shirt on and then wear this . . . I know neither are your style as you’ve made it abundantly clear, but come on.” 

“You’re the one who dragged me out here like this.”

“You’re the one who isn’t even trying to cover up . . . and you assaulted my Dean. That’s what it was, plain and –“

“He didn’t seem to upset by it.”

“Are you kidding me?! I heard him yelling at you from outside the room. He was upset by it.”

She finally got my long-sleeve t-shirt on and huffed while she threw my jacket on and looked up at me. “You can’t take me to her. Ask your Dad . . . if your Mom was bad, I think mine was worse. She’s why I am the way I am.”

“I knew you weren’t in Heaven.”

“How do you know she didn’t torture me as much as possible for as long as she had me before she told them to come get me when she thought she could get something out of it?”

I didn’t. 

“Beth, what’s going on?” I looked up and saw 2 Deans, 2 Sams, and a Cas. I honestly had no idea. I didn’t know what to do with her. In my life, I didn’t reverse my decisions, but this wasn’t my life, and I don’t know if it was justice. It might be that revenge thing I had to be careful of when it came to Dean, but on the other hand, what she’d done to Dean was cruel, and she hadn’t felt bad about it until I said what I did about taking her to her mother. But then when it came to being a judge, there were judges in this universe who could deal with her, and judges had to sometimes recuse themselves for conflicts of interest, didn’t they? 

“Well, I was thinking about taking her to her mother’s”

Sam stepped forward and said, “Dressed like that?”

“Well, she’s wearing more now than she was when I dragged her out of Dean and mine’s bed, so yeah.”

They all looked at each other, and Sam looked back towards my motel room door and said, “Where is Dean? You didn’t –“

Dad popped up behind me and said, “Putting a call into me.” Looking down at Saoirse, he snapped his fingers, and she disappeared. _Thanks Dad, I wasn’t sure what to do with her . . . what the morally right thing to do was anyway . . . I was thinking about sending her to her Mom, and then –“_

“I know. That’s why Dean put a call into me. He saw how she reacted when you said that and remembered what I’ve said about her. He thought maybe you going was a bad idea. It is . . . I sent her where I sent Sam . . . a different part, where she can learn her lesson . . . that’s what you wanted, right?”

“Your kind of a lesson or mine?” 

Dad rolled his eyes and said, “She’s going through a trial of her peers for what she did to Dean and will experience what it’s like to go to prison . . . if they convict her, but her lawyer isn’t very good. She’ll be back when you and Dean get back.” That’s when Dean came out of our room. He saw she wasn’t there and gave Dad an appreciative nod, so Dad said, “You ready?”

“Wait, what are we doing?” 

Dean stepped forward and said, “You know whether or not she was in Heaven or not?”

“No. She just made it seem like her Mom abused her and then sold her to the angels . . . but I still think she could've become a demon in Hell.”

He nodded, like that’s what he’d thought and said, “Well, then we’re going to Heaven to find out if she was up there. We need to start narrowing down who she really is . . . maybe she’s the problem we’re supposed to fix in this timeline. Like you said, she could be why we landed somewhere different than where my deal came due.”

“Wait, can we go back to her being in bed with –“

Dean turned to glare at whichever one of the others that’d said that. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Looking at them, I said, “He didn’t do anything wrong. She pretended to be me and wasn’t wearing anything, so she’d look like me, especially in the dark . . . He figured out she wasn’t and was yelling at her loud enough I could hear him outside. We’re leaving . . . Purgatory Dean, I guess that means you’re coming with us. I promised you I’d bring you if we ever went to Heaven.” 

I glanced at Dean, and he shrugged to let me know that was all right with him, and Purgatory Sam said he wanted to go too. Dad quickly said, “No more than that . . . Cas, you’re taking care of Rogue. She’s already in your room. I’m going to make sure they don’t start another civil war.” Cas nodded, and with a snap of Dad’s fingers we were standing in a room I knew all too well. It was my favorite place up here. This is definitely what I needed after the last 10 minutes. Maybe it's what I needed to be find myself again. And now I could show this place off to Dean.


	44. Homesick

Dean followed Beth as she led them through a little windy entrance that opened up into a . . . well, it was the nicest room he’d seen up here. It looked exactly like something that would appeal to Beth. “This in our Heaven?”

She smiled, and said, “Yeah, this is my favorite place up here. You up for me showing it off?”

Yeah, she could have whatever she wanted; do whatever she wanted . . . for life. She’d believed him without question. Nobody in their right mind would have, but she had . . . He should feel bad. Maybe he would when he’d had time for it to sink in, but mostly he was pissed off and felt violated and like he’d never been so grateful to be with Beth as he was right now, because for a few seconds, he’d thought he’d lost her. “Yeah, so, this was like your best friend up here, right?” 

He ignored the other Sam and Dean giving each other a weird look and focused on her smile as she said, “Yeah, come on,” before she grabbed his hand. This room felt comfortable and warm unlike the sterile halls. The bookcases were dark wood and the tables looked old and worn and like nobody had used them in a really long time. The walls were faded with age . . . kind of looked ancient, like the walls in her soul. There were books and scrolls and tablets on the shelves in the bookcases. The books added some color. Color. That was something that was missing in the rest of Heaven.

Beth went forward and then took a right down the last row and then left down a row at the back. This was the best part of the room because of the mural at the back. Beth took a seat next to it. She had to bring her knees to her chest to wedge in there, but she fit, and he thought about how she sat when she was upset about something. She curled up just like that, except she didn’t have bookcases on either side of her. Dean sat cross-legged next to her and said, “So, this was your safe place, huh?” Beth glanced at him, and Dean said, “Lots of books, small, protected on three sides, colorful, but kinda dark . . . It’s looks like your reading room at Bobby’s.” She smiled, and he said, “Not sure this is as comfortable though . . . no beanbag chair.” 

Beth looked around and said, “It’s as comfortable as you’ll find up here.”

“So, this looks the way it does in our Heaven?”

Beth bit her bottom lip and reached across to the bookcases across from her. Putting her finger on one of the shelves she said, “My initials aren’t here . . . When I found the first prophecy . . . it was in a book above where my initials were . . . I got rid of the prophecy, but I didn’t want to be forgotten . . . I thought if at least my initials were here, my library wouldn’t forget me.” 

He looked at where she was pointing. This is it. This is where she read about him. “The one that said you and me were connected?” She nodded, and Dean looked at the book above where she was pointing. “This one?” 

“Yeah, it looks the same, but I bet it’s not in there.” Dean pulled the book out to have a look, and Beth helped him flip through the pages. “Yeah, see, it should be there, but it’s not.” 

Dean looked at the page and then back at Gabriel. “It all right if I take this?” 

“Why wouldn’t it be? I sent you guys stuff from our Heaven, and this isn’t our Heaven.” 

Right. That made sense. It’s just he wanted . . . a memento or something that said he’d been here. It seemed like he was getting to see something really important, getting a history about Beth that didn’t include the pain and torture. “What else is different?”

He glanced over at her, and she said, “The righteous man’s initials . . . I carved them under the shelf where mine are supposed to be . . . I thought you were locked away in a cell like me at the time . . . I didn’t want anyone to know about you, that’s why I hid your initials, but I didn’t want you to be forgotten either. I used sit here for weeks and look at them and come up with ways of getting you out of prison or finding you after I’d searched everywhere up here and knew you weren’t here.” 

Dean leaned forward to have a look under the shelf and asked, “How old were you . . . when you carved your initials?” 

Beth bowed her head and said, “I’m not sure 9 or 10. When I found the prophecy, it felt like . . . I don’t know, like Fate that I’d finally found my name in this library that seemed . . . almost magical compared to everywhere else, and next to this mural . . . I didn’t know what it was called at the time. It took a lot of research for me to be able to find out what it was called . . . I just thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen at the time. And I’d seen people on Earth watching a TV show about prisoners, and they carved their initials and added, ‘was here’ after them, and I thought it was a good idea, a good way to commemorate my finding . . . even though I didn’t add the ‘was here’ part.” 

Yeah, after the blood and guts of her cell and the white sterile walls and floors in the halls, that mural and all the colors in it . . . “You ever see color before you came in here?”

“I did when I saw things on Earth, but it was like watching it through a TV screen, and the books are different colors, but not this many in one place and up close.” 

Dean relaxed a little and heard the Dean from Purgatory say, “And you thought I . . . he was up here in prison too?” 

Beth glanced at him, like she just remembered he and Sam were here, and nodded. “Yeah, I got in big trouble when I was 12 or 13 for staging a jailbreak to distract the guards with the other prisoners while I went to check out the other cells in solitary . . . all I found were angels. I waited with Gadreel for the guards to come . . . I didn’t feel like running anymore that day.” 

“And you didn’t know what, uh, we’d be like?” Dean should be annoyed, but back then he and the guy asking the questions were the same person, so back then, she had been looking for both of them. 

“No, I didn’t . . . I didn’t even know the righteous man was Dean Winchester until 6 or so months before his deal was due. That’s when I finally found him . . . He was on a hunt for three witches. One of them was possessed . . . and I was really proud of him and about the fact that I’d been written about alongside him . . . He was better than I ever thought he’d be . . . I knew the angels were planning to bring him back from Hell, but he didn’t know that, and he was still fighting for other people. I thought I was really going to have to up my game to keep up when I got out of here.” 

Dean glanced back at the Dean and Sam from the Purgatory universe, and they shared a look. They'd done that same hunt. “See, things are the same and different if you did that hunt. Only difference is I had Beth’s evil twin tagging along for the ride.”

Beth added, “Yeah, and that’s when I decided to put my efforts into researching her, so I could find out what was wrong with her . . . Then I found out what was wrong with me . . . Other than needing my body back, Rachel being a bitch was why I had God kill her.” 

Purgatory Dean asked Beth what was wrong with her, and Beth said, “I had half a soul . . . I didn’t know about the nephilim part, but I knew that something had been done to her to twist her into being a monster . . . I guess maybe you could say it was redacted . . . Lucifer level forbidden.” 

Dean said, “Yeah, but having half a soul never meant there something wrong with you. Never mattered to me . . . actually think Bobby said one time he preferred you with half a soul.”

Beth gave him a genuine smile, and it kind melted away even more of the icy dread in his chest from what happened just before they got here. It was going to take a while for him to get over that. Then she glanced at her Dad, and Gabriel said he’d take the other two to check the library where her tunnel ended to see if it was there. “If it isn’t, that doesn’t necessarily prove anything. I used that tunnel to recover an awful lot and escape, and she’s a demon for a reason.”

Her Dad thought that one over and then said, “Yeah, but you were punished up here for getting caught after you broke out of your cell . . . other than research, spying on the enemy behind enemy lines, and helping Castiel, the other reason you broke out so much was to build that tunnel . . . I’d say that’s what got you caught the most with all your sneaking around in angels' offices. It doesn’t prove anything, but until prison security see you, we won’t know for sure.” 

“Okay . . . We’ll meet you there . . . at the library, not the prison.” The other Dean and Sam gave each other another confused look, and Gabriel ushered them out of the stacks, while giving them the rules he wanted them to follow when they got out into the halls. 

As soon as they were gone Beth said, “You know how when I first read about Rachel, I thought I must’ve been a really bad person when I was born . . . what if my soul is bringing out the worst in Saoirse. I can see it happening, but I really wanted to be wrong about who I was supposed to be.” 

Dean took a deep breath and flipped through the book in his hands. “You were right when you were curing her, Beth. She’s not you or at least not the real you. I know the real you. I’ve known the real you since the day we met. You’re the original, right?” He glanced at her when she didn’t say anything, and she nodded, so he said, “I don’t know what the hell happened to her, but I’m thinking whatever it was made her crazy, and not in a torture kind of way. I think this is what she was like before she went to Hell or came here . . . If her Mom was bad enough for Gabriel to show up the way he did to keep you from going there . . . maybe she did something to her, and that’s why she turned out the way she did. Kinda looking forward to finding more universes with you in them, so you can see what I mean. Think that’s really the only way for you to believe me.”

“You think maybe . . . You think I should find out –“

“No. Stick with the Whack-a-Mole neglectful mother that Gabriel gave you . . . doesn’t mean anything about you if she is evil . . . I mean look at Lily. Her human-half is the half I worry about kickstarting that succubus quarter, but she’s a good kid, a great kid. She’ll be a little soft, but Rogue will have her back, and they’ll look out for one another. I trust her to do that someday.” Dean looked around and added, “You wanna show me around more, or do you want to see if we can find Zachariah and Uriel . . . start taking out the angels who will be a problem for the me and Sam in this universe?” 

Beth smiled. “Yeah, sure. We can do that . . . on our way back from the prison. We have to see if Saoirse was up here, and if she wasn’t, then we need to start looking into her life before she was in Hell . . . I’m thinking we could start simple and look into Rachel McCoys born on her birthday and go from there. I’m pretty sure she picked her name after she we cured, the way I did when I got out of Heaven.”

Dean thought he again for the hundredth time that week that he and Cas should’ve left a lot earlier than Cas had left when they were curing Saoirse. Maybe the others should have too, because who knew how much Saorise had picked up from them that was making it that much harder to figure out what to do with her now. “Yeah, okay . . . unless you want to christen one of these bookshelves.”

“I’m not mad at you for what happened.“

Dean leaned forward to brush his lips against hers. “Think maybe you should show me . . . I do better with show than tell . . . If it’s a problem, I disinfected my mouth and everything, so -”

“I can tell. Were you planning on kissing it right, or –“

“No. Just wanted to stop feeling dirty . . . maybe there were lingering demon germs there. You never know.”

Beth smiled and said, “Couldn’t fit out the bathroom window again, huh?” Maybe things would be okay. He was sick of these other universes though. He just wanted to go home.


	45. Turning a Team Into a Family

When we got back to Earth, my Dad sent Saoirse to the younger Sam from this universe. She was going to stay with him. Solo-Dean, was coming with us, and Cas and Rogue were going with my Dad. Saoirse hadn’t built any tunnels, which wasn’t all that surprising given that she was a demon, but Prison Security also hadn’t recognized me when I walked right up to them, like I was lost. They asked me my name, and Rachel McCoy didn’t ring any bells, neither did Saoirse McCoy. We banished them before they could take me back to a non-existent personal Heaven, and then we got out of there. If she’d been in Heaven, she hadn’t been held in the prison the way she’d said, and I didn't see any other way she could've become a demon up there. 

Dean finally got to kill Zachariah, and we teamed up together against Uriel. I think maybe that was what Purgatory Sam and Dean had needed to see . . . how Dean and I fought together. Maybe it let them know that despite our metric ton of baggage, we were a good team, and experienced. Now we just needed to kill Lilith on the down low without letting the angels know we’d done it and this universe shouldn’t have an Apocalypse. As soon as she was gone, we’d either still be here or not . . . if we were still here, we needed to take our investigation into Saoirse a bit further . . . if the Apocalypse, and all the steps that followed it weren’t what lead to Dean getting the Mark of Cain in this universe, then maybe it was her.

We weren’t killing her, but I think she needed some pretty intensive therapy. I’d had time to think about it, and I mean, the people we saved from the wendigo farm may be messed up for life, but they were able to integrate into the Wisconsin camp after their counseling for cannibals. I didn’t know how to get Saoirse the help she needed or even what was quite wrong with her, but I’d find a way to fix it. I think it was my responsibility to do that . . . if we were still after this hunt.

My Dean hadn’t been there when I summoned Lilith the last time, so he’d definitely wanted to be a part of this one, but I think maybe he was sitting back a little too. Maybe he was going to try and steal the kill out from under us at the last second, but maybe he also knew the other Deans and Sam needed to do this one. Maybe he also didn’t feel like training them. I mean, he was great with the kids in our camp, but these were other versions of him and another version of Sam, and I could see how that would get a little awkward. Purgatory Sam read through the summoning ritual and said, “So, once we finish this, she’ll show, but she can show whenever she wants?” 

“Within reason . . . I mean it won’t be years or anything. It was about an hour the last time. She has to show . . . unless she has an anti-summoning sigil seared on her. Just be ready for anything once the summoning is done.” 

The 'teetering on the edge and not doing nearly as well as everyone thought without his brother' Dean said, “And the killing exorcism works.” 

“In the last timeline, her eyes were on the prize, so I got the drop on her and said the first line before she even knew I was there . . . as soon you do that, it locks them in so they can’t move. When I summoned her the first time, she knew something was up, because she was summoned, and I definitely needed Cas to help me trap her, so we could say the exorcism.” 

“Trap her how?” 

The sad Dean answered Sam’s question. “Devil’s trap bullet, right? I mean if it worked on Abaddon, it should work on Lilith, and you knew all about what we did with Abaddon before that.” I nodded, and he smiled briefly, like he was happy he got something right. 

Pulling out an iron knife with a devil’s trap scratched into it, I handed it to him. “Or, depending on what kind of meat suit she has, you could use something like this. There’s less damage if you know how to throw it somewhere non-vital.” 

He had a good look at it and said, “Same idea as the bullet, but you put it on a blade . . . Who came up with this?” 

I nodded towards my Dean. “He did before he went into Vegas to do recon . . . no guns, and they couldn’t leave any bodies behind, or Sam would've known we were coming. It works on weredemons too if it’s on a silver blade.” 

Purgatory Dean came over to look at the knife and asked what a weredemon was. “Well, see, the werewolves in Sam’s camp all had collars on that kept them from changing, so all this energy would build up over time, and as soon as the collars came off, they’d change anytime of month, day or night . . . He got how to do that out of the shifter tablet. The problem with the collars was that they cut the werewolves off from being controlled by their alphas, which means they could escape, so Sam had his werewolves possessed . . . weredemons . . . The demons can cross iron and salt, and they had the heightened senses of a werewolf, but they aren’t as vulnerable to silver as werewolves because of the demons.” 

They both grinned and looked back at my Dean before Purgatory Dean said, “I think coming up with names to call all the hybrids you guys have is one of the things I’m looking forward to the most.” 

"You can keep that knife . . . As far as stabbing things go, all I really need is my lucky silver knife and my angel blade.” 

Purgatory Dean had the knife, so he looked like he was thinking of ways to hide it from the sad Dean in places the sad Dean wouldn’t think to hide it, because they were the same person, and that might make it hard. On the other hand the sad Dean looked like he was thinking of ways to steal it, so I laughed and grabbed my spare silver knife. It’s the one I’d used on Tom. It had a devil’s trap etched in it too. Giving it to the sad Dean, I said, “Keep it. I can’t throw them. If I think I’m going to be going up against a weredemon anytime soon, I’ll get another one.” 

Now they looked like they both wanted that one. In fairness, it was a nice knife. They both wanted to see my lucky silver knife, so I pulled out my silver switchblade from my boot pocket and showed it to them. “Why’s it lucky?” 

_It just is._ “Uh, well, every time I’ve had to use it, I was lucky to live? Plus, it’s pretty much the only thing I have on me that I can use to pack my fist.” 

Purgatory Dean nodded his head towards my jacket and asked, “What else do you have on you?” 

“What?”

“I wanna know what you’re packing.” 

_Oh. Why? They’re not gonna keep taking my stuff are they?_ I went digging around in my pockets and found my mini-tranq gun. “What’s this for?” 

I glanced up and saw Purgatory Dean holding one of the cartridges I’d put on a table and said, “It’s got holy water in it . . . it works well for vamps if you use dead man’s blood,” before I pulled out my mini-spray paint can, my lucky piece of chalk, a pocket sized canister of salt, and my devil’s trap bullet gun along with as many rounds as I thought I’d need.” 

Looking at my stuff, I said, “I just brought stuff I’d need for a demon.” One of them asked me if that’s all I had for demons. “No, I have my brain, and I know plenty of exorcisms front to back, plus the killing exorcism. My angel blade will kill Lilith. I don’t go anywhere without it, but I won’t use it, because it’ll kill the meat suit. I wanted to travel light, so I didn’t bring my sawn off. I didn’t bring my silver devil’s trap bullets either. I didn’t bring much else in the way of holy water, because if I’m close enough to splash her with it without her being trapped, I’m too close, and I didn’t see the point in bringing my sniper rifle.” 

They glanced at each other and wanted to know what I meant about my sniper rifle, so is said, “Well, for my salt hallow points.” 

Purgatory Dean smiled briefly before he said, “So, uh . . . what’s with the salt if you don’t want to get close enough to use holy water that's not in a dart?” 

“Better safe than sorry . . . I don’t know if she’ll bring any minions with her. I’m a pretty bright target for them, so it’s in case one teleports behind me and is stupid enough to try and pick me up with its arms instead of its powers, and a lot of them seem to be that stupid.” _Did I pass the test?_

My Dean smiled and said, “Yeah, you’re good . . . come on. Let’s get this over with.”

I thought it was a pretty solid success. The Deans worked together on Lilith, and Sam and I took the minions. I think everyone worked together just as well as they had the last time we killed her, as a team. The sad Dean did get pretty banged up though, so I had a look at him when we got back to the motel. To take his mind off of what I was doing, he asked, “What do you think’s keeping us here?” 

“I don’t know. Zachariah’s dead. Uriel’s dead. Lilith is dead.” 

“You know there is one pretty big difference in this timeline, right?” 

I waited until after I’d carefully slid his shoulder into place to answer. “The other me? She was here to play the part of Ruby, and maybe she’s still playing it even though she’s human now? Does that feel okay?” He looked at his shoulder and nodded, so I smiled and said, “You won’t keep it in a sling, but ice will help,” before I got my stuff out to give him stitches. 

“What do you want to do about her?” 

My attention flicked up to his eyes. Yeah, he’d meant that the way it sounded. “She’s human . . . anything that could’ve been done about her went away when I insisted on curing her.” 

Dean shrugged his other shoulder marginally and said, “Is she human though? I mean there’s something off about her . . . There's no way she should be this different from you. Your Dean says you’re, like the original model . . . You know anything about the other versions of you out there?” 

“I think my Dad said one time that if I hadn’t been taken when I was born, then Dean and I would’ve stayed together when we were 17, like we did in that do-over life, but he wouldn’t have been my Dad . . . I mean he would’ve created me, but my zombie-Dad would’ve been –“ 

“The one Death brought back?”

I smiled, because it was hard knowing which ones knew what. “Yeah, that one. And my family wouldn’t have been killed by werewolves when I was 15, but my zombie-Dad would’ve traveled around more, and that’s how I would’ve met Dean when I was 17 . . . and I wouldn’t have found out until your crossroads deal was due that I was a nephilim, because Lilith would’ve tried to bright light me to death the way she tried to do with Sam, and it wouldn’t have worked . . . I don’t think the soul mate thing would’ve been as strong if I was a nephilim, so I wouldn’t have died with him, and I would’ve researched possible reasons why I hadn’t died to figure out if I could use whatever it was to get Dean out. Sam still would’ve gone off with Ruby . . . And then Dean would’ve come back, and Cas would’ve known what I was and would’ve said it the first time we met. Dean would’ve tried, but he would’ve struggled with me being a nephilim, so I would’ve gone to Cas to get him to remove my grace, and it wouldn’t have gone very well . . . Afterwards Dean would’ve gotten mad for me almost dying and at Cas for almost killing me, and we would’ve had a big fight about it. He would’ve stormed off, and we both would’ve kept hunting. Dad said Dean would’ve looked for me at every hunt, and then we would’ve ended up at the same hunt . . . I think he said it would’ve been the seal Alistair tried breaking by killing Death, because Cas would’ve called me disguised as Bobby too to put me onto it, and then we would’ve worked things out and stayed together. That’s the only one he’s told me about.” 

Dean watched me work away and then said, “See, I actually think that sounds like you . . . I mean that’s what you do, right? You two fight, and it’s about him thinking you do something that’s too dangerous for him –“ I looked up at him, and he smiled. “He talks a lot when he’s drunk . . . but, uh, what your Dad told you sounds like you, not her . . . something is off with her.” 

Returning my focus to his shoulder, I said, “Maybe it's me bringing out the worst in her.“ 

“Or . . . maybe there are some things you just can’t scrub clean with the cure. I know you cured Meg, and she’s your friend, but as much as I hate to say it, even as a demon Meg’s one redeeming quality was that she was loyal to whatever side she was on even if that side was outnumbered. Guessing she’s the same as a human, but I’m also guessing she isn’t someone most people can get along with . . . either that’s her or it’s the residue being a demon left behind.” 

He waited for me to say one way or the other, so I said, “Think it might be a little because of the attitude she developed as a demon. I just don’t see rich Italian women from the 1700s acting the way she does now.” 

He quickly asked me who Meg really was, so I told him, and he didn’t know who that was, but he said he was looking it up as soon as we were done. Then he said, “We know Saoirse wasn’t in Heaven, which means Hell, right?”

“Yeah, but I wanna know how she got the body she was supposed to have back.”

Dean thought about it and said, “Well, I mean, Abaddon put herself back together after we cut her up and after Sam lit her on fire . . . Think she just liked the meat suit. Maybe Saoirse just wanted her own meat suit.” 

“The right ritual would do it . . . so are we thinking it was a deal?” 

“Well, if she was you before she was a demon, then I don’t see any other way she’d end up in Hell.” 

He was so genuine about it. It was sweet, so I smiled before I said, “I’m thinking she made a deal to have her grace removed . . . I mean sure, she could be a demon and still have her grace, because angel-demons are demons who used to be angels, but she would’ve been stronger as a demon or even now. And Dad would’ve said something about her having grace, so I think it’s gone . . . I’m guessing that we’re going by a standard 10 year deal, and she should be 29 now . . . any idea how long it takes to make someone become a demon?” 

He smiled and asked if I was asking because I thought he was the expert on that, so I nodded, and he looked up while he thought about it. “Depends on the torturer, but at least a couple hundred years for most . . . So, we’re looking at 2 years minimum?” 

Looking at Dean, I said, “2 years to be a demon . . . would’ve put her at 27. Take away 10, and you’ve got 17 . . . maybe she did meet her Dean when she was 16. Maybe he told her he was a hunter . . . he told me. Maybe she knew what she was, and either thought he wouldn’t want her like that or –“ 

“How would she have known that if you weren’t supposed to find out until Lilith tried to kill me in that life your Dad told you about?” 

“John would’ve wanted her to go with him, because he would’ve wanted to keep an eye on both of us, I think, but if her parents wouldn’t let her . . . her Mom knew how she was made . . . I’m thinking her Mom knows a whole lot more about the supernatural than most people, and maybe a hunter is the last thing she’d want her daughter seeing.” 

Watching me, Dean said, “You think her Mom’s a witch?” 

“It would explain why my Dad got forced into making me if the right spell was used, and yeah, if I found that out, it’d upset me for a number of reasons. I’m not even going to touch that. I’m sticking with Saoirse’s Mom is a witch, and mine was just a bitch.” 

Dean gave me the flicker of a smile and said, “Okay, so let’s go with that . . . She’s going by Saoirse now, but you think maybe her name was Rachel, right?”

“Yeah . . . first one was evil. This one is fragile and –“

“A bunny boiler.” I laughed, and he said, “The me we picked up in Purgatory has been saying it since a couple days after she got here . . . I think maybe he’s right. I mean who sells their soul over some guy.” I started laughing again, and it took him a few seconds to understand why. “Shut up, Beth. It’s not the same, and you know it . . . You ‘bout done, or . . . “

“Almost . . . Want to ask me why I think the kids in our camp are going to love you?”

He rolled his eyes. “Not right now . . . maybe. Why?”

“Because none of them have families anymore other than the ones they’ve created, and you’re the one who will be able to give them the most attention.”

“You mean because I’m like them.” I didn’t say anything, so he sighed. “Thought I was gonna get to go blow stuff up with tanks.”

“Yeah, maybe when we figure out what’s going on with New Orleans.”

“So, you just come and go for things like that . . . what about those kids?”

“Month at the camp and a month on the road is how it’s supposed to work out, but we’ve been having a hard time keeping to it, so it was more like a month there, 2 months out, and then 2 months there. Now we’re here, but when we go back, we’ll go back to the moment we left.” 

He started asking more questions after that, and I loved talking about our camp, so I had a lot to say, but I also wanted to give him a sense of purpose for the future, because I didn’t want him getting hurt like this again. I’d meant what I said. He’d be able to give those kids the most out of all of the Deans because he’d have the most to give. That’s what those kids needed, and what they’d give back were 1000 people who would tell him he was family and didn’t need to ask for second chances with them.


	46. Getting Answers from Gabriel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is from the perspective of the Dean without a Sam.

It was time to go to the source. Dean and the guy everyone around here called Purgatory Dean for some reason even though Dean had been there too decided to talk to Gabriel about this thing with Saoirse. It was pretty obvious that they were still here because of her and while everyone else was researching to try and find her when she was alive as Rachel McCoy, this was an a lot easier and faster way to find stuff out they wanted to know. Gabriel was a billion old angel. He probably had some answers.

The guy the others had picked up in Purgatory started them off. “Could she still be working for the other side even if she’s a human?” 

Gabriel shook his head, like he didn’t think it was that. “Beth wouldn’t. The few other versions of Beth that I’ve seen wouldn’t. But I’ve never seen one become a demon . . . I’m surprised she turned that fast if you think she was only in Hell for 2 or 3 years. I’m not really surprised that she must’ve gotten out almost as soon as she turned . . . that’s something Beth would do. The question is why did Rachel want to get out? And why did she go to Sam straight away? She could be working for someone. Maybe Lilith did want her to play the part of Ruby in this timeline, but I’m not seeing it . . . I think she’s too strong-willed for that. Beth and Rachel both had that in common in my universe.” 

Dean sat forward and said, “Wait, so you’re saying she was actually there to protect Sam?“ 

“My guess is that if she made that deal for the reason Beth thinks, then she probably did go there to protect Sam . . . She’s probably smarter than any of you thought she was if she can speak Enochian as well as she can. My guess would be that she started reading up on angels as soon as she found out she was half-angel, and that’s how she knows it and if she was on Earth her whole life, that’s why she doesn’t have the same accent Beth had when she got out of Heaven . . . If everything she’s done is for her Dean, then she could’ve heard about his deal while she was in Hell, the same way Beth heard about him when she was in Heaven . . . Maybe she went demon early, so she could find a way to get out to stop Dean from dying, and if she found out she didn’t make it in time, then maybe she heard why Dean made the deal and remembered Dean talking about his little brother and wanted to protect him.”

The Dean they picked up in Purgatory mirrored Dean and sat forward to ask, “Okay, but why attack Beth and latch onto Beth’s Dean?”

“Well, I said she thinks like Beth and does everything she does for Dean like Beth. I didn’t say she felt like Beth. She probably feels things more like Rachel . . . maybe because of the effect Hell had on her. Envy? Wrath? Pride? Take your pick. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t a part of her that feels a genuine bond with Beth, the same way you Deans have bonded. If you 3 weren’t around, then maybe there’s a chance things would’ve gone smoother. If she’s done everything she’s done for her Dean, then seeing you three around is going to be confusing for her if she hasn’t seen her Dean for 13 years.” 

“Would she seriously make a deal to –“

Gabriel looked at the Dean who'd had Purgatory easy and hadn't had to find his own damn way out. “She probably thought she’d be able to find him in less than 10 years, but she couldn’t, and then I’d say she probably thought she could find him after she came out the other side of Hell.”

“That’s insane!” 

“Yeah, well, it is what it is . . . Rachel lives for her Dean the way you live for Sam. Which one of you two didn’t sell your soul to bring him back?” 

Dean glanced at the other Dean and said, “Yeah, Beth said the same thing, but we raised Sam. It was our job to protect him, and we didn’t. If Saoirse seriously did all of that for him after meeting him for a couple of weeks, that’s crazy.” 

Gabriel laughed. “You two are so far out of your depth . . . We’re talking about soul mates here . . . It’s not just on her side. Why do you think your Dad let Beth come with them? You should’ve seen what her Dean was like after I took her away from him when he was 17. I had to completely erase his memories of ever meeting her, or he would’ve given up hunting and ended up in a gutter, and I bet if you talked to the Sam from this universe, you’ll find out his brother was never the same again after they left Rachel . . . All it takes is one real connection . . . and both of you have been dumb enough to do that in different ways with Beth. You just haven’t had her disappear with no hope of getting her back yet.” 

“What the hell are you talkin’ about? 

Gabriel’s eyebrows rose at Dean’s tone. “Nobody ever asks me the important things, or they ignore my advice . . . oh there goes Gabriel, the Trickster, he couldn’t possibly know what he’s talking about. He’s only been around for 14 billions years.” Dean shared another look with the other Dean, and Gabriel said, “I’m not saying it’ll be like what she has with him, but she will give what you need as a friend and confidant . . . In the long term, I’m not sure how it’ll work now that there are 3 of you, because this is outside of anything I’ve ever seen, but . . . don’t let anymore of you come traipsing in to confuse her even more . . . and maybe try to find another one of her . . . one that’s out there on her own somewhere.” 

Gabriel looked at the other Dean and added, “I doubt you’ll be jumping to her tree, but that’d be the best way to find one.” 

Dean laughed at the look on the other Dean's face just before the other Dean said, “I take it this is what Cas was talking about with you telling everyone else in the room what people are thinking . . . What’s he thinking?”

 _Nothing . . . not thinking –_

“He’s thinking there’s only one he’d be interested in.” 

“What the hell’d you say that for? I wasn’t thinking –“ 

Gabriel smirked and said, “You were earlier. What? I have to have my fun somehow when I’m trying to play it low-key . . . You two came in here wanting answers, but wanting my advice more . . . Here it is. Have Beth talk to Rachel masquerading as Saoirse. It needs to be a Dean Winchester-free zone. Beth needs the time to explain everything to Rachel and the Dean from this universe . . . Information is power, and maybe that’s all the power you need to finish the job here, but if you three get involved before Rachel’s Dean gets back, expect her to start getting more and more violent with Beth.” 

Both Deans said, “What about Rogue?”

“Did you two forget she has a Dad? He’ll be here, and she’s not going anywhere near Rachel. Why do you think I took her to India and China to see some tigers the first week Rachel was here.” 

“Real tigers?” 

Gabriel smiled and said, “Yeah, she loves tigers. I thought she’d like to see them in the wild instead of a zoo. She roared at them, petted them and got to ride around on their backs . . . I had to tell her to stop pulling their tails, because – What? You two need to lighten up. She loved it. I’m thinking maybe elephants or seals next. Ooh, or polar bears.” 

The other Dean said, “Why don’t you just throw her to sharks next,” and Gabriel gave him a weird look. 

“Why would I do that? She can’t swim yet.” 

Dean laughed when the other Dean said, “You’re fucking with us, right? Did you do this kind of shit with Beth?” 

Gabriel smirked. “Hello. Archangel. And it’s not like a tiger is going to banish me. I wouldn’t throw her to sharks. They can’t be reasoned with . . . and yeah, Beth loved wolves when she was small . . . She hated hyenas. She didn’t like the way they smelled or the noise they made, so she sided with the cheetahs and started punching the hyenas in the noise when they had one up a tree. That was almost a disaster . . . We stuck to the discovery channel after that, but Rogue isn’t her Mom even if she does a lot of things her Mom did. She didn’t feel bad for the deer the tigers found . . . she clapped when they caught it.” 

Dean shared a look with the other Dean, and Gabriel said, “I doubt Beth remembers, but you could ask her. She was really little then . . . I’m pretty sure it’s why she likes dogs so much now and why she thinks of Cerebus as her friend though.” 

Gabriel genuinely seemed to be trying to do a good thing with all of this, but Dean still thought he should offer some . . . ground rules or advice? “Maybe stick to non-man-eating animals, like . . . the seals sound good . . . maybe giraffes?” 

Gabriel looked like he’d consider it and said, “No polar bears?” 

Dean shared grin with the other Dean, and then the other Dean said, “I think if you want to keep it up longer with Rogue than you did with Beth, then no polar bears . . . I mean they eat seals, right? What if Rogue sides with the seals?” Gabriel looked like he thought that was a good point, so the other Dean added, “You get clearance for this from Rogue’s parents?” 

“Beth thought the tigers were a good idea. I didn’t ask her Dad. He tends to be a killjoy, like you two . . . but maybe if I want to keep showing her different animals in their natural habitat, I should stay away from the man-eaters . . . except tigers. They’re really quite reasonable as long as they’re fed, and she doesn’t pull their tails.” 

Dean laughed and tried to act like he hadn’t when Gabriel looked at him. “Uh, yeah . . . uh, maybe take one of us or her parents with you the next time you decide to show her tigers . . . think we might want to see how it works.” 

The other Dean decided to change the subject back to business when it looked like Gabriel was going to argue about having grandfather/granddaughter time. “So, you’re just going to call Saoirse, Rachel?” 

Gabriel went from being a proud grandfather to looking like a protective Dad as he looked at the other Dean. “She hasn’t earned the right to rename herself. As far as I’m concerned, she’s Rachel.” 

Dean started to say, “Yeah, but she did go to Hell, and –“ 

“She’s Rachel . . . Saoirse is just a lie she used to bond with Beth more, because she didn’t want Beth to abandon her. She meant it when she told Beth she didn’t want to be alone anymore. She was alone in her home life, because her father was a weak man, and her mother was like the wicked stepmother in Cinderella . . . Then she found the one person who made her feel whole, and whatever happened there, she lost him again, and she knew she was a nephilim . . . That makes her extremely rare . . . Like there might be one other nephilim on Earth right now, and there’s no way she was ever going to find her. She was obviously alone in Hell . . . She wants Beth to be her sister, because she’s the same as her . . . I didn’t say she had an easy life, just that she hadn’t earned the right to re-name herself and forget all about it. She made the choices she made that lead to where she ended up . . . Beth had no choice in it, and she never had a name. Mostly, they thought of her as the waste product they had to keep around, so their creation down on Earth didn’t die.” 

_That was a terrible thing for a –_

“I didn’t say I thought she was. I’m telling you how they saw her, and I’m telling you something she already knows.” It almost made him want to go find her, so he could give her a hug. “Well, if you do, don’t tell her why. She’ll think it’s a pity hug, and she hates pity.” 

Dean gave Gabriel a little glare for continuing to tell the other Dean what he was thinking, and Gabriel grinned. Gabriel was annoying, but finding a way to live with Gabriel wasn’t a complete nightmare.


	47. Boundaries

I knocked on the motel door, and young Sam opened it. He looked confused. “Yeah, you guys weren’t too hard to find. I thought you might want to know that Lilith is dead. Even if the seals start breaking, Lucifer won’t get out of his cage.” 

“Does that mean Dean will still get out?” 

“Well, the angels sent to get him don’t know she’s dead yet . . . There’s something of a bad connection in angel radio going from Heaven to Hell. If you want, I could go with you to make sure they don’t just kick him back down there when the mission of retrieving him is over. It means we should stay near his grave, so I can call my Dad to put those markings on his ribs the second he resurfaces. Then we can get him out of there as soon as possible . . . I doubt the angels will do that though. They tend to follow prophecies pretty religiously, so you and I might know that Lucifer won’t be getting out, but they’ll still think he is, just maybe another way, and they’ll want your brother out to fulfill his role in stopping the Apocalypse . . . even if I guess he already has, because we did this for him. The angels won’t see it that way. They’re pretty set in their ways.” 

Sam sighed with a nod before he stepped back and asked if I wanted to come in. Not really. I really didn’t want to see her. Just the thought of it made my stomach tighten up in knots, but if it’s what I had to do to make things right in this universe, I didn’t really have a choice in it, so I nodded and stepped inside. She was sitting on one of the beds, and she didn’t look like she felt any better than I did. “Hi, Rachel.” She looked from me to Sam, and said something about my evil twin she’d been telling him about being named Rachel. Then she got up and grabbed my hand, so she could pull me outside, while she told Sam we had a lot of things to discuss. 

As soon as we got outside, she started to say, “I know you’re a headcase, but confusing me with – “ 

I sighed and reached for a pack of cigarettes while I interrupted her. “You can drop the act. I know you weren’t in Heaven. I know you were Rachel McCoy and went to Hell . . . I’m still here. You don’t have to have the same history as me to get me to stick around. I –“ 

_Oh hello._ She’d landed her lips over mine, so I pushed her back. “What the hell? I don’t –“ She went to hit me, and I blocked it before saying, “I’m not turning you down to hurt your feelings. I don’t think anything bad about you. I’m just not interested.” 

I signaled to my go team that I was fine without her knowing, so they wouldn’t come charging in here. At first they were okay with it, and then when it was time for me to meet up with her, none of them had wanted to leave me with her for any real length of time. The best I could do on compromising with them was a two-block radius no matter where we went, and they wanted constant updates complete with code words, so they knew I was the one on the phone and not her. 

She took what I’d said under advisement and then launched herself at me in a hug I couldn’t get out of without hurting her, probably emotionally, and definitely physically. I didn’t know what to do. Mostly, I tried to maneuver my arms, so I could light my cigarette over her shoulder, and she said, “Do you have to smoke?” 

I sighed again, because she still wouldn’t let me go. “Right now. Yes, yes I do have to smoke . . . Can we keep our hands above the belt?” 

Whispering, she said, “Yeah, but we don’t have to pretend like we’re sisters, and –“ 

“Do I have a say in this? I’m fine with it if you’re bi, but this is seriously weird . . . You’re me . . . Obviously, you love yourself, so good for you, but I don’t . . . Plus, this isn’t you . . . this is you needing to have more of me, because of me being able to contact God.” 

She put her hands up to an acceptable place and said, “No, I’m not you, but I want to be. How do I be like you? I tried your man, but that didn’t work . . . your clothes and your music weren’t right. I’m not sure that –“ 

Shaking my head, I said, “Fucking hell . . . You really are a bunny boiler. Were you like this before Hell, or did –“ 

She yanked back on my hair and punched me in the mouth, but I blocked the next punch and pushed her back again, saying, “This is totally unacceptable . . . You need to learn some goddamn boundaries,” and then she went flying and landed on her ass a few feet away. _Oops._ When she got back up, she tried to go at me again, but it looked like Chuck had decided a 2-foot boundary was what she needed to keep from me.

Looking up, she touched the invisible barrier before looking at me. “How the hell did you do this? Why would you . . . “ She kept asking me questions. I pantomimed that I couldn’t hear her, so she started shouting and getting pissed off about it until I laughed.

“Nah, I’m just fucking with you . . . uh, it looks like God wants you to stay 2-feet away from me until you learn some boundaries.” 

She slumped. “Really?” 

“Yeah, apparently you didn’t learn them in my Dad's prison.”

“I really thought maybe if you and me could be together, I could figure out –“ 

Sighing again, I said, “Just stop with the crazy . . . I know you save it up for me when we’re alone, but you need to cool it. How did you get like this? I’m thinking there was a screw loose when you made your deal. Who unscrewed it? Was it your mother?” 

She didn’t answer that question, but she did look sad. “Oh, look at what I did to your lip again . . . I’m sorry.” I stuck my tongue out to feel it, and tasted blood. Yeah, I guess she did bust it open again. Hanging her head, she said, “You said you wouldn’t leave and then had me sent to prison . . . Where’d you go?” 

Looking down at the cigarette in my hand, I noticed that it’d gotten broken in our scuffle, so I dropped it on the ground and grabbed another one. “Heaven . . . I wanted to check your story. While we were there, we picked off a couple of angels, who would have been a problem for you guys, so now you don’t have to worry about them. 

“You were supposed to teach me how to kill them.” 

“Why would you even want to kill them if they never had you in Heaven?” 

She pointed at me and said, “I heard what the rest of them were thinking about what the angels did to you. I wanted to do it for you.” 

She looked so normal. She didn’t even look like a hunter right now. She looked pretty in the short light blue flowy summer dress she was wearing, but she was absolutely fucking insane, even out in public like this. Thinking about her naked in bed with Dean felt like another sucker punch, except she didn’t have to be anywhere near me to feel it. I hated what she did to him. I hated what she did to me. And I hated that she was me.

“Seriously what happened to you? You know you’re unhinged . . . I think that’s why you’re trying so hard to be like me . . . I mean, that’s what you mean when you say that, right? You want to not be crazy?” 

She ducked her head and took a deep breath. “I told you she made me this way.”

“Well, if she’s a witch, I’ll do it for you.” 

She shrugged and said, “She’s a witch?” 

That wouldn’t work as confirmation. I’d need to borrow Dean’s witch sensing amulet. “Think I’ll confirm that myself . . . if you don’t mind. No offense, but –“ 

“I don’t know if she’s a real witch. I just know she and I never got along. She used to lock me in a cupboard when I got out of hand, and that’s probably the nicest thing she ever did. She wouldn’t let me go with him . . . She told me why I couldn’t be with a hunter, so I tried to fix it before he and his family left town, but I was too late, and I couldn’t find them again.” 

That was pretty damn close to the way I thought that’d gone down. “I figured it was something like that.” 

She started crying and asked if she could have a hug. I guess that asking was the acceptable protocol for boundaries, so when I went to give her a hug, Chuck’s invisible boundary let me do it. I told her we had some time before her Dean came back from Hell, so if that’s why she was trying so hard to be like me, we could work on her issues. “You shouldn’t go near her. Be happy with the Dad you have. As far as she knows, I’m dead, so I’m not planning on seeing her again.” 

“If that’s what you want, I’ll play it your –“ 

_Oh for fuck’s sake._ I pried her hands from the sides of my face, so I could pull back from her lips again and gave her a look. “Don’t you dare hit me.” She paused and nodded, and then it looked like she was going to try to kiss me again, so I took a big step back and said, “Stop that. Feels like you’re trying to suck the answers of how to be me out of me . . . 2 feet.” 

I turned to leave, and she asked where I was going. “We need to start fixing this now. I’m going to get a haircut . . . and don’t even think of getting the same one . . . You need to figure out that you are your own person even if we’re the same person, and yeah, you wear dresses, and you wear makeup, but you only started doing that after you figured out the stuff I wear wasn’t right for you. Might as well go all the way with it, so we don’t really look alike at all . . . just tell Sam I’ll be back later.” 

“Can I come?”

I turned back to look at her and said, “Why the hell do you keep kissing me?”

“Your Dean thinks it makes him feel like he’s home or calm . . . I want to feel –“

“You’ll feel that when you’re with your Dean . . . Go tell Sam I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Okay, but I can come, can’t I?” 

Sighing, I stopped and waved back towards the door. “All right fine, but go tell Sam.” She asked if I’d wait for her, so I nodded, and then she ran up to the door, like a little kid excited she was going to go play with one of her friends. I waited there on the sidewalk for her to do whatever it was she was doing in there, and then she came back out looking like little miss freaking sunshine in a pair of short jean shorts and a flowy top. _Why the fuck did she change clothes?_

“I don’t like it.” 

I looked at the hairdresser in the mirror and said, “Don’t listen to her . . . It looks great. It’s exactly what I wanted.” 

I’d always liked Selene in the Underworld movies. Now my hair looked like hers. It’d kind of looked like this after that demon chopped half my hair off while we were closing the gates of Hell, but it was longer then, and I think this hairdresser knew what she was doing better than my Dad had when he fixed it. It should be super easy to take care of now, and no more messy ponytails for me until we got back to our universe. Maybe we should start training some of the kids to be hairdressers it in the schools at the camps? It didn’t really matter to me a whole lot, but I bet it’d make other people happy to have something like that in the future.

Rachel nagged me about my haircut the whole way to a diner, where we picked up food for Sam, and then she nagged me the whole way back to the motel, and when we got to the door, I finally told her to shut up. “What? It makes you look too sexy. You don’t do sexy. You have enough problems at the bars as it is when you downplay it.” 

What a bitch. I smiled and took a step closer to her. She looked a little flustered and took a step back, and then I let my smile fall and pointed at her. “I wear what I want to wear. I look the way I want to look. Why should I change the way I look to the way you or anyone else wants me to look to accommodate you or them . . . You think I don’t know you’re bitching about my hair cut, because you want one like it now? Get your shit together, Rachel, cause I’m not letting you fuck your Dean over . . . just look forward to seeing him and stop trying to be me.”


	48. Not Taking Any Chances

“I don’t know what the fuck is going on right now.” Dean didn’t really know what was happening right now either, but Saoirse or Rachel or whatever her name was . . . she was totally messed up. He should’ve done something about this sooner. He had a bad feeling about this, and he’d learned to trust his gut a long time ago. 

“Where’s she going now?” 

Dean glanced at the Dean next to him and said, “Anywhere but where Rachel is.” Then he watched Rachel say something, and Beth stopped walking before she looked annoyed and pointed back towards the motel room. Rachel took off looking happy and came back 15 minutes later wearing different clothes. 

“Does she think they’re going on a date?” Yeah, if he didn’t know any better, he’d say that’s exactly what she thought this was. “Should we go after them?” Dean watched them walk up the road. Beth put her arm out towards Rachel to see what happened, and it pushed Rachel away without her coming anywhere close to touching her. 

“It looks like Beth had Chuck put something in place, so Rachel can’t get close to her unless Beth says she can, and after that last kiss, I don’t think Beth’s going to be getting too close . . . I think she’ll be fine until Rachel figures out a way around it. If Beth’s not back in a few hours, then we can go look for her . . . She definitely shouldn’t be living with them alone. Rogue isn’t going anywhere near Rachel, but I don’t think if the rest of us showed up it’d make a whole lot of difference . . . Think she’s totally after Beth . . . I think that’s why she only ever talked to Beth in Enochian when the rest of us were around. It was so she could have something separate with her, and maybe to make a point of using Beth’s first language with her for some reason . . . I don’t know . . . I mean watching that, don’t you get that same kind of feeling you got with the first couple of victims on that Famine case?” The other Dean didn’t answer. Well, that guy might not think it, but that’s the way it felt to him. He’d mostly been talking to himself, his real self, not the one standing next to him.

“So is it because she can talk to God or not? You don’t look like you think that’s what this is.” 

He didn’t know. “Some parts of it seem like it is, but it feels like there’s more to it than that. And whatever it is, I think it’s getting worse.” Was it always going to go this way, just Rachel becoming more and more aggressive with Beth until she snapped, or was it because Beth left her and went to Heaven? 

Dean felt the Dean next to him step back to go do something else in the room. Someone needed to stay here and keep an eye out for Beth. He was trying to walk that fine line of trusting her to look after herself, which . . . she’d done a pretty good job of it, or at least a better job of it than she normally did, and feeling protective and wanting to follow her from a lot closer than their agreed 2 block radius. This was his compromise on that. If she was out there, then he was waiting here for her.

Sam came up behind him a little while later to watch the sidewalk with him and said, “So, uh, the Famine thing you were saying . . . why do you think it feels like that?” 

He didn’t know. He couldn’t put his finger on it. “Feels desperate, like she needs to consume Beth . . . She doesn’t just need to take Beth’s things to put Beth in her place, and that’s what happens when it’s because of the deal she made with Chuck. This feels like she needs to take Beth’s things, so she can be Beth . . . She’s missing something Beth has, and she wants it . . . She just doesn’t know what it is, so she started checking off the things around Beth that are important to Beth to see if it was those . . . Think she’s figured out it’s something about Beth, and that’s what we just saw. I think this is going to get worse. I think it’s only a matter of time until she decides the only thing that might make her feel better is if she kills Beth and becomes her that way . . . The more Beth doesn’t give her what she wants, the sooner I think that’ll happen. Feels a hell of a lot like Rachel . . . my Rachel and what she was made into . . . The way a psychic vampire works is they feed on a person’s life energy to fill the void of the original soul . . . but it’s not the good life energy. It’s more like the energy surrounding grief or guilt or the fear that people have before they die a violent death. I don’t know what’s happened to this Rachel, but I don’t think it was just her making a deal to get rid of her grace and then her going to Hell . . . Maybe in the deal she made, the demon screwed up and took something other than just her grace . . . maybe it's something else. It’s almost like somebody made her into something like Rachel, but she needs to feed on Beth until she gets whatever it is she’s looking for . . . How I don’t know, and I don’t know why. Be good to know what she was like before she died . . . might be worth it to talk to the Dad who raised her if he’s still alive, not her Mom.” 

One of the Deans decided to come back now that Dean had said something that didn’t make them think he was off his rocker. “I knew Gabriel was fucking with us. It’s not the soul mate thing at all, right? I mean she was crazy before that . . . It wasn’t meeting her Dean, that made her sell her soul.” 

He knew those two were worried about it, but he didn’t think it’d be the same for them. The one with a brother, the one who’d just said that, that guy was fine. That guy was in a good place. He’d purged whatever was wrong with him in Purgatory and came back out to find a brother who was there and wanted him there and signed onto this mission with him. That guy’s universe had been changed, but their Fate had been changed just as much. They were never going to have the same problems the Dean who signed onto this mission solo had. The Dean they’d picked up in Purgatory wouldn’t fuck things up with Sam.

The solo Dean . . . that guy was the poster child for needing to cling to someone, like Beth, the way Dean did. “Think it depends on our lives. That’s what makes us different. None of us know what was wrong with her before she met him. Look at Beth and me. She doesn’t fall apart when we separate. I do. She gets reckless, and she does crazy things to keep moving, but they usually work out, so it looks like she’s fine even if she isn’t . . . I can keep going for a while as long as I have some whiskey on hand, but then I start losing days or weeks at the bottom of a bottle, and I stay that way until Gabriel either erases the memory of her or I go find her to fix it.” Sam laughed uncomfortably from his other side and said something about him being surprised he’d say that. “Why? I wasn’t hiding it when I went on that bender and brought you and Cas with me . . . That was day one. Goes downhill after that . . . for me, but I don’t think it’d be that way for your brother. He’s in a good place right now.” 

Sam awkwardly glanced at his brother before briefly nodding to show he understood what Dean had meant by his brother being in a good place and then said, “But you seem like you’re in a good place.”

He was, but . . . “Seen too much to ever really be in a good place . . . But I do have things figured out. I’m not just a hunter. I hunt because I want to hunt, and I’m great at it, but that’s not enough for me anymore. It’s like I told my Sam one time. There’s living and then there’s living. I don’t want to be empty or just a weapon anymore . . . I want more than that.” 

Sam ducked his head and nodded. “Think I’d give just about anything to hear my brother say that . . . but I don’t think that’s going to happen. This is close enough, so . . . thanks.” 

Dean exhaled a laugh and shook his head before looking back out the window. “Yeah, well, I was dying of pneumonia at the time . . . I was out of it for a few days.”

“Then why’d you say it now?”

“Cause I know both my reflections are listening even if one is pretending not to . . . and they needed to hear it. They’re always kicking my ass to make sure I don’t fuck up . . . figured I should do the same.”

The Dean next to Dean rolled his eyes and said a smartass comment before leaving, but Sam stayed there. “How do you make it work?”

Dean glanced at him. Did Sam want big brother advice on women from him? “You asking for your brother or you?” Sam shrugged, so Dean said, “Uh, find a hunter . . . one that’s hard to kill. You don’t have to hide what you are . . . Find a balance . . . Get used to compromising and have fun with it. That’s what Beth and me do . . . we negotiate on everything. It’s like a game. And get to know all the small things about her. They’re the most important . . . Bobby told me that one, and he was right.”

Dean went back to looking out the window and left Sam with that bit of advice to do with what he wanted. It was kind of weird having Sam asking him stuff like that. He used to talk to Sam about stuff like that the first time they grew up together. He hadn’t thought there was anything he could advise Sam on in a long time. 

Sam must’ve been the group’s delegate to talk to him, because he came back later and asked if they were back yet. Dean shook his head, so Sam said, “It’s been a couple hours. I’m sure she’ll call when she gets back. Do you really need to –“ 

Dean nodded. He did. It was his job to have her back. He wasn’t letting Beth go in that motel room alone. He still wasn’t sure if he was going to kill Rachel or not, but he knew he didn’t want Beth alone with her. Who knew if Beth’s invisible barrier worked with guns or knives? As soon as Rachel thought of something like that, she’d try it, or she’d find a way to turn Sam against Beth and have him do it for her. She was manipulative like that from what he could tell . . . wouldn’t mind spending forever with Beth in Death’s lock up, but he wanted her to have a good life before that happened, that retirement they talked about sounded pretty good . . . sure, they had things to do when they got home, but with Bobby on the supernatural computer, they should be able to do it a lot faster than they had been. Plus, there was Rogue to think about. They could finally have a chance to raise her the way they’d always planned to do it. Just remembering how she burst into tears when she saw him again after he came back from Purgatory as the Dad she remembered . . . Probably wasn’t the best time for Beth and Rachel to come back, or at least it wasn’t for Rachel. No way was he letting her take Rogue’s parents away from her.


	49. Coming Out of a State of Shock

I’d just finished telling Rachel to get her shit together and took a step back away from her, and I don’t know what happened. I know I flinched, and something wet sprayed across my face, but before I really had time to process anything, I was standing outside a bar. _What the fuck just happened?_ I looked around, and I was the only one there. My bags were with me. _Did we jump? Where is everyone? What the fuck just happened?_ I reached up and touched my face to see what I’d been sprayed with, but I think I already knew, because my hands were shaking when I looked at my fingers and saw blood on them.

“Beth?” I turned and saw Sam. Which Sam was it? Was it my Sam or the other Sam? Did it matter? 

I lifted my shaking hand to show him the blood and said, “I don’t know what happened. I . . . we jumped . . . where . . . I don’t know what’s happening . . . Do you know?” 

He came up and put his arms around me in a tight hug that I didn’t return but was okay with letting him do, because I didn’t know what else to do. I guess that meant he was the other Sam? My Sam wasn’t in a hugging mood the last time I saw him. Or maybe my Dad’s lesson paid off? I remembered something I hadn’t really paid attention to right before it happened. My Dean-tracker . . . I started panicking and pulled away from him while I wiped the blood off my hands and onto my jeans. “Was it Dean? Was it Dean? Is this his? Did he . . . Is that why you hugged me? Is he –“ 

“Beth.” I don’t know who said it that time, but I looked and did a quick headcount. Everyone was there now. A tear slid down my cheek, and I lasered in on Rogue. “Why does she have a baby seal? I wanted to give her a stuffed baby seal . . . never got a chance to get one before she was born, and then I forgot . . . and I kept forgetting even though I remembered. Now she has a real one? How are we supposed to feed it? It’s too small for fish. It needs milk, right? Where do you get seal milk? A zoo? I’m going to find a zoo.” Then I just kind of turned and started walking down the street away from everyone. 

Around that time, a Sam ran up to stop me. It was a different Sam. He put his hands on my shoulders and made me look at him before he whispered, “Are things sliding away from you?” 

_I wish he wasn’t blurry._ “Are you my Sam?” 

Giving me a brief smile, he nodded, and then said, “Is this seal milk thing another flannel shirt?” 

“No, I don’t think so . . . I’m not . . . there’s nothing I’m trying not to remember . . . any moments I may have had like that were after you went crazy . . . I’m on the up, or . . . I thought I was on the up. Maybe I’m not.” 

“You wanna tell me what happened? I think I’m a little out of the loop.” 

I leaned closer and whispered, “I want to go home, Sam.” 

He looked at someone behind me, waved them away, and went back to looking at me. “Yeah, well, it’s a little late for that, isn’t it? What happened?” 

I cocked my head to the side and said, “I don’t know . . . I think this is her blood . . . if it isn’t Dean’s blood, then it had to be hers, and we jumped, so I think she’s dead, and he killed her. I was just talking to her . . . I wasn’t very nice about it. I told her to get her shit together. I didn’t know he was there, but I think I sensed him. I just didn’t pay attention to it, because I was mad at her.” 

Sam sighed and looked over my shoulder again before he said, “Who is she?” 

“Who _was_ she . . . The other Rachel . . . That was her name. She was made a demon in Hell. She sold her soul to get rid of her grace, I think, because her Mom wouldn’t let her go with you guys when she was 17. She was really messed up. She wanted to be me. She kept taking my things and realizing that those things weren’t what made me . . . me, I guess, and all day today she kept trying to kiss me, and when I pushed her away, she punched me . . . well, she did once. I blocked the rest. And then Chuck decided she needed to keep a 2-foot boundary from me.” 

Watching me, Sam said, “So, she was bad?” 

“She had a screw loose. I don’t know if she was really bad, because I don’t want to be really bad, but maybe she must’ve been why we were in that timeline if we jumped after she died, because killing Lilith, Zachariah, and Uriel didn’t make us jump. I don’t think she was fixable, but I was going to try.” 

Sam was careful with his wording and said, “But she was a threat to you, right?” 

“I guess. I told her she needed to learn some goddamn boundaries, and Chuck decided to listen.” 

He smiled before he said, “You’re hair looks nice.” 

_My hair? With brain matter and blood in it? Oh. I got a haircut._ “She already wore dresses and make up, and I thought the only thing left to make us look different was our hair . . . I didn’t want to look like her, because I hated that she was me, but I told her I was getting my haircut, so she could be her own person, because she kept saying she wanted to be me, not like me, but actually me . . . I like Selene in the Undworld movies, so I went for her haircut.” 

Sam smiled again before he said, “Well, it looks nice . . . You wanna go hug Dean now?” I started to nod, and Sam stood up, turned me around and pushed me into Dean’s arms before walking around us to get round the rest of the group up . . . I guess. I was having a hard time processing everything.

“Did Dad fix him, or is he being nice because I want to get seal milk?” 

Holding onto me tightly, Dean said, “Probably both . . . You okay?” 

I didn’t know. “I didn’t know what was happening . . . I just knew I got wet stuff on my face and showed up here with my bags alone . . . I think I knew it was blood, but I still checked anyway, and then . . . I thought it was yours. But you’re okay.” 

He took a deep breath and said, “Are you letting yourself feel what I’m feeling?” I nodded, so he said, “Good . . . I want you to know why I did it before I say anything, so you’ll believe me.” 

“What’s not to believe? I already know it was because you were feeling protective . . . not vengeful . . . Don’t you think you went a little overboard with it?”

“No, I don’t . . . The people in these other timelines matter, but I’ll do whatever it takes to get my family home . . . She was going to get worse. I think she would’ve kept trying to figure out how to be you until she figured out she couldn’t and decided to just kill you and be you by saying she was you after you were gone. It was like she was trying to feed on you like our Rachel. I don’t think she was human. I –“

“She was human, Dean, but –“

“I don’t know what her Mom did to her or what kinds of experiments the demons ran on her in Hell, or if the demon who took her grace took more than that, but . . . She –“

“I did say it felt like she was trying to suck the answers out of me.”

Dean stepped back to look at me and said, “Maybe we should have your Dad check you out and make sure she didn’t do anything to you or take any of your soul.”

“But . . . she said she was kissing me because when you do it, you think it makes you feel like your home and calm, and she wanted to feel like that, so she thought maybe I could do the same for her. I told her to wait for her Dean, and –“

“Maybe you were making her feel that way, but not because of what you and I have . . . Maybe it was because of whatever she was getting from you. I mean, why’d she do it more than once if she knew the first time it didn’t work . . . unless it did. And she wasn’t just kissing you . . . I don’t know what the fuck she was doing . . . it looked like the same kind of desperate that the people who ate each other were on that Famine case. It wasn’t just because of your connection to God . . . it was more than that.”

“You think she ate my soul?”

I started tearing up again, and Dean pulled me to him before he breathed out a sad laugh. “I don’t know Beth . . . Like I said, I don’t know what her Mom did to her . . . maybe she did something to her to keep her from the other me or maybe when she went to Hell, she went more succubus than normal demon, so it was more about life force than your soul, and . . . maybe some of that was still there after the cure, because it's not like a succubus is a normal demon . . . I just know it would’ve gotten worse, until she killed you, and I wasn’t gonna let that happen. I don’t know why your Dad didn’t say anything about it. I –“

“He would have if he'd seen it. He wouldn’t have let her –“

“Well, he must not have been able to see it, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong . . . I know what I saw, and he wasn’t there for that. She wasn’t doing that shit the last time we saw her . . . or when he saw her. He saw her all of 10 seconds before he shipped her off to wherever he sent Sam . . . maybe being separated from you triggered it, and she felt like the clock was ticking before her guy came back, but something drew it out in her . . . I’m not wrong.”

“Okay . . . Succubus? Is it possible to make someone that way . . . like a spell or something or –“

“I don’t know. I know you wanted to try and help her, and maybe we could have if she wasn’t so focused on you, but she was, and I’m not sorry I did it.”

“She said her Mom made her that way . . . She said they didn’t get along and her Mom used to lock her in a cupboard and that was the nicest thing she did. Maybe –“

“She said a lot of things, Beth . . . You were raised in a cupboard, and you aren’t like that. You were tortured, and you didn’t turn out like that. Maybe it’s like you said. Maybe there was a spell, or –“

“What if what she was trying to do to me is what I did to you?”

He was quiet, and then he relaxed when he understood what I meant. “You mean because of your soul getting fixed?” I nodded, and he laughed. “That wasn’t the same thing . . . You know how you eavesdropped on your Dad muttering about your soul when we did that training exercise?”

I nodded, so he said, “What’d you think it was after Meg possessed you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You were still hooked up to me for life support, and I didn’t know if I was really hearing you, so after you realized I wasn’t going to let you go to find my Dad, you started saying stuff to make me not feel crazy . . . You said maybe the light was love, and –“

I stepped back to look at him. “That’s a bunch of crap. I’d never say something so . . . sappy and lame.”

He started laughing and said, “I know. It didn’t help with me thinking I was crazy, but you did. You thought it’s what made the demons sick, and now that I think about it, Cas did have a thing for you when he got one of those shiny parts, didn’t he? Maybe –“

“No, that’s ridiculous. I’d be like 70% -“ He leaned down to kiss me, and the first thing I said when he pulled away was, “Then why’d it stop growing if –“

“I’m not saying that’s what you’re made up of . . . I mean your Dad said the justice part of your soul got a lot stronger than it should be . . . just saying maybe that’s why you could rebuild it, and maybe you and me had to be in a good place for it to happen.”

“I think you’re sappy and lame.”

He laughed again, and then his smile fell a little. “I don’t want you to think you’re a monster. You’re not . . . You’ll see. If we find another one of you, I bet she’s like you, but the last one . . . She needed to go. Whatever was wrong with her, I don’t think it could’ve been fixed, and we’re here now, so she’s the reason he would've gone off the deep end. I couldn’t let anything happen to you or Rogue.”

I slowly exhaled, and asked, “So what was it like shooting me in the face?” 

“Probably about the same as when you took out a whole room of shifters that looked like me.”

“So, pretty easy, then, huh?” He laughed, and I said, “Are we going to have problems with the others? I mean that’s why Sam did what he did, isn’t it? He was trying to get me to confirm she was a threat, so they didn’t do anything to you?”

Dean looked over his shoulder towards the bar attached to a motel that everyone had gone. “Think the solo-Me was on board with it a while ago. I think the guys from Purgatory were a little more on the fence, but not against it. I think your Dad and Cas came back from their seal expedition with a freaking seal, and now they’re going to argue over whether or not Rogue can keep it, and I think Sam was doing that to try and show us he’s changed and was looking out for you. Whether he has or just doesn’t want to be sent back . . . I don’t know.”


	50. Fresh Out of Rehab

Sam focused on the laptop. He wanted to find out why they were here, so they could move onto the next one and the next one and hopefully be home soon. Beth wanted to go home. He wanted to go home. He suspected Dean wanted to go home. Rogue was happy wherever she was, but she probably missed the kids at the camp, and Cas . . . Cas was probably a little like Rogue, happy wherever he was as long as he had his family, but ready to go back to the life he knew.

He needed to go back, and maybe before they got there, he needed to start killing off the other Deans as well as the other Sam. Then he could go back to his old life. It was a life without temptation. It didn’t have multiple brothers to choose between. He didn’t have to hunt there. He could just teach and not hunt. That’s what he wanted. Maybe it was the wrong reason for him to want to teach. Maybe he was supposed to do that, so he could make those kids’ futures better, and maybe there was a time when that’s why he wanted to do it, but now . . . now, he needed to do it as a cover, a warm security blanket, that would keep him from going evil again. 

If he didn’t want to be evil, that had to be the first step, and he didn’t, so he thought that was pretty good. Where he should go from here, he didn’t know. A plan, a plan is what he needed, and he needed to stick with it. Work these universes, use the help they got from the other versions of them, kill them off along the way, and go back home.

Gabriel had made him relive his worst hits, but he’d relived them on the other side, meaning he saw his face looking back at him and torturing him, and he’d remembered doing those things to various people, but he’d had to feel it from those people or monsters perspective. The worst for him had been when he’d been in Dean’s position in the Luxor . . . Beth had made a big mistake in not killing him. 

Gabriel had said she didn’t, but he’d thought maybe Sam had needed to go through something akin to the kind of torture that’d purged the other Sam of his sins with Ruby and releasing Lucifer when he went into the cage . . . except it wasn’t Lucifer torture, it’d been Sam torture . . . x2 because he saw what it was like to be in other people’s shoes, which meant not only did he feel pain externally, but he felt pain internally at what he’d done to other people, because even when it was happening, he’d known that it would be over . . . Gabriel had just been proving a point, reminding him why he couldn’t allow himself to go evil again . . . it wouldn’t have been a lesson if it was never going to end. A few weeks, that’s all he’d been there, but it’d been more than enough, or he thought it had been.

The only time he’d had a reprieve was when he got pulled in as a defense lawyer for some stupid jury trial. He’d had to defend a clone of Beth. He was thinking now that she must’ve been real. He hadn’t thought she was then, but if Dean just killed a clone of Beth, then she had to have been. He’d lost the case. She’d gone to prison, and he hadn’t cared. He just ended up back wherever he’d been . . . staring into the face of himself. He was freaking terrifying. Part of him that didn’t want to admit it didn’t even want to look at the other Sam, because it was the same face . . . He didn’t even want to look in the mirror. He was thinking of smashing them all up when he had the chance to do it alone.

Dean came up to him. One of them did anyway. He wasn’t sure which one it was. Maybe he needed to figure that out before he started killing them off. His Dean might have seen him at his worst, and they hadn’t. No matter how mad Dean got at him or how hard of a time he gave Sam for things he did that were wrong, his brother still loved him enough to keep him around, even if things weren’t the way the way they used to be. His brother shouldn’t have done that, but he did, and the other Deans didn’t deserve that kind of a brotherly bond that Sam felt towards his own brother.

“You all right, Sam?”

Sam glanced over at the Dean sitting next to him and gave a nonchalant shrug. His whole demeanor was calm on the exterior, and studious and maybe came off as him being slightly annoyed that he’d been interrupted. He had to keep up appearances. He wasn’t sure if his brother would be upset with him for killing the other Deans off. His brother had just wasted another Beth, so maybe he’d understand.

“I just want to get out of this universe. Nothing in the bar panned out. Every other time we’ve shown up somewhere, it’s been where we were needed, and in the last universe we showed up in the middle of nowhere . . . I don’t know . . . maybe Chuck’s trying to send us a message through where he sends us.”

Dean sat back against the wall and said, “Well, in the last universe we got there the same day as when Lilith collected on her deal with me, but we were across the country from where we needed to be. It was a messed up universe. I mean, we killed Lilith, Zachariah, and Uriel, and the only thing that got us out of it was killing Rachel. I’m starting to think maybe that’s why Chuck wanted us to change me going to Hell without being able to remember it . . . Maybe we got too reliant on Beth telling us about the future, and in some of these, we just won’t know what we’re up against, because they won’t be anything like that show.”

“But he still let us cheat.”

Dean looked at Sam for an explanation, and Sam said, “He let us feel our real lives . . . He let Beth have her memories of our old life back. He let us cheat.”

Dean thought about it and seemed less sure. “But we were already changing things before she remembered our real life. We changed them a lot from that show too, like we knew what killed Jess was a demon a lot sooner, so we had time to prepare for demons more . . . found out about devil’s traps and wards a lot sooner. Dad didn’t sell his soul for me. I found out that when I was dying, Beth was too . . . we were there with you at Cold Oak.”

“You were only at Cold Oak because of what Beth felt about Ava from our old life.”

“I mean, that’s half of why she walked Ava to the door, but I was pissed at her, and she wanted to put that off as long as possible.”

“But you were only mad at her because she got reclusive after what her Dad said about our old lives.”

“Maybe, but we had to ask for him to tell us first. She did after she got her angel blade and using it felt natural to her . . . I mean if you really want to call him out on cheating, you might as well say him answering her prayer requests was a cheat . . . it was the same thing. The way I see it is we used every tool in our arsenal, and it worked.”

“But you still went to Hell.”

“I did, but we changed everything about it without destroying the universe. And we did it early enough that we all came back. You didn’t die. I didn’t make a deal. I –“

“One you wouldn’t have made anyway if you didn’t feel like Dad traded his life for you and if you thought it might affect Beth?”

Dean sighed and said, “Look, all I’m saying is what if none of those things had happened, and the angels still threw me in the pit anyway, but at the end. I wouldn’t have had time to come back. If Beth hadn’t had her memories of our old life back, she wouldn’t have been able to get me out of Hell. We –“

“I helped too.”

Dean rolled his eyes and said, “I know, Sam, but there’s no way you would’ve known how to find that doorway she used if she hadn’t remembered it from our old life. God put that in as a failsafe to my deal. It’s why he had me make the decision for her . . . She figured it out in time, and we got what we needed to make it back home alive. It was as much about learning to use the tools we have as it was learning about how not to blow up a universe to change Fate and maybe how big of a bitch Fate is if you don’t do enough . . . Changing things when you know the right pieces to take is easy, like when we finished the first Lilith universe in half an hour, but the last one took a little longer. I think that’s the take home messages from our training exercise . . . well, that and that people in these universes matter.” 

Maybe. “Are you sure they matter? I mean, they don’t matter as much as us, right? Us making it home is the most important thing, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, but I mean . . . we have a job to do, and we’re going to do it, whatever it takes, or we wont’ have a home to go back to . . . those kids at the camp need us to do this, but I’m also going to do whatever I have to do to make sure everyone with us makes it back to our universe alive when we’re done. It’s just that Rachel in the last universe was . . . I don’t know. I don’t think she was quite human, so before she could do anything to Beth or Rogue, I took care of it.” 

Or that’s what Dean was using to tell himself he’d had to kill her. Maybe Dean was right, but Sam hadn’t been there, so he didn’t know. He took it that meant killing the other Deans isn’t something Dean would approve of him doing . . . He’d just have to be sneaky about it and do it without Dean knowing he was behind it. “Come on, Sam, you don’t have to figure it out tonight. Let’s go check out that bar, have a few drinks, and get you out of your head for a little while.” 

Did that mean Dean knew what he was thinking? No, Dean couldn’t know something like that. Maybe Dean just wanted to spend some time with him. If that’s what it was, Sam was up for that. “All right, but just the two of us. I’m sick of seeing double and triple of everything.”


	51. Rude Awakening

I sat up with a start and looked at my hands. They were shaking, and I felt cool all over, so I must’ve been sweating. Why did that dream make me react this way? It shouldn’t have. Alistair deserved what I did to him. Was it because of what he’d done to Dean? No, I didn’t really see Dean in that dream. I went to flip on a light and heard Dean or a Dean say, “Leave it off,” from somewhere towards the foot of my bed. Something felt wrong, really wrong. I looked to my right to see if Rogue was still in the bed across from mine, and he said she was okay before he said, “So, that was your solution to Alistair?” 

_Yeah, was I talking in my –_

“No.” 

Okay. So, he knew what I was dreaming, and my Dean never knew stuff like that. Angels could do things like that. Is this a Dean that agreed to be Michael’s vessel? “You wanna talk about what I did to Alistair outside?” 

He was quiet for a few seconds and then said, “Yeah, but forget your angel blade . . . I already took it.” 

_Took it?_ “What do you mean you took it? As in you’re going to keep it, or . . . I want it back.” He said I should keep it quiet if I didn’t want to wake up the kid, so I got up, but he wasn’t there when I got to where he’d just been, or where I thought he’d been. Now I wasn’t really sure he’d ever really been there. Maybe it’d been a dream?

I still decided to throw on a pair of flannel bottoms and a hooded sweatshirt, and went outside anyway to be sure. It was dark, which isn’t all that surprising considering that it was night, but it was darker here, because the lights outside my room and the rooms next to mine were gone. Pretty sure they were working when I went to sleep, and they were working outside other motel rooms further down the building. 

He was standing with his back to me, and when he turned around, he had to take a reflexive step back and blinked a couple of times. “You’re really bright up close, aren’t ya . . . There a way you can turn that shit down, so I can look at you.” 

_Chuck you’re an asshole._ “You already have the mark? You died, and it brought you back, right?” 

His response was to push me up against the wall. “Turn it down.”

“It’s not like I can just turn down my soul. I’m not making you feel sick on purpose. You’re making me feel just as sick, so thanks for –“ 

He kissed me before I could stop him. _Oh no. No, no, no . . . Oh yes . . . No, be good . . . Do we have to be so hasty? Another minute wouldn’t . . . No, stop it . . . Shut up._ He felt good. I don’t know why. The kiss just felt . . . different. It made my chest feel warm. My whole body felt tingly. Oddly enough, I felt safe. I certainly didn’t feel sick anymore. I finally made myself push him away, and he took a few steps further back once he let go, probably because when he didn’t have his tongue in my mouth, he went back to feeling ill. I know I did, and he didn’t do it for my benefit, because well, demons don’t do things for others.

“You have one too.” 

_Fuck it._ “No, I don’t.” 

“Yeah, you do . . . You just can’t see it.” 

It wasn’t the same thing. “Yours is for the sister, and mine is in case the sister wants to kill her brother . . . just have to close the lock and seal it . . . I’m a back up plan in case things don’t work out the way God thinks they will . . . it’s my job to protect the light, so everything doesn’t get destroyed, and yours is to do the same thing by keeping the Darkness locked up, so she doesn’t destroy everything.” 

Taking a step closer, and said, “You’re lying . . . It’s more than that, and you know it. Just can’t figure out a few things, or does God have a twin too . . . Can you die?” 

“Yeah. She’ll think that he’ll be locked away as long as she was, and then when I die, however long that takes, he’ll get released again . . . I can talk to him while I have it though . . . it connects us, and it makes people want to kill me . . . whereas you get a high from killing others, and if she ever got released, you’d be connected to her . . . We’re opposites doing the same job.” 

“So, we’re sticking with the lie then. A half-truth is still a half-lie.” 

“Can you prove anything I said isn’t true? No . . . Until then it’s like Schrodeinger’s cat, it’s the truth and at the same time a lie until you open the box and see what it is for sure.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about . . . It’s like another freaking language.”

_I know_ “What are you doing here?”

“You tell me.”

“I’m not a mind reader.”

“You sure about that?”

Sighing, I said, “I’m guessing you were drawn to my room for some reason you couldn’t explain . . . Who knows how long you were picking through my brain to figure out who or what I am . . . I’d say you know a lot more about me than almost everyone else. You got the whole picture by doing something I couldn’t block . . . It wasn’t thoughts in the form of words you filtered through, it was actual memories, so you saw them. Why’d you wake me up when you got to what I did to Alistair?” 

He started pacing slowly back and forth like a lion in a cage. “I wanted to let you know I thought it was some of your best work . . . even if you stole it from Puriel . . . is that his name?” Well, that confirmed what I’d said even if I hadn’t been sure. I nodded, and he looked like he was taking note of it. “You took away his power, and I’d say right about now he’s begging for those arms and legs that are just out reach . . . That was good.” 

Okay. “Can I get my angel blade back now?” 

Giving me a wicked grin, he pulled it out from the inside of his jacket. “You mean this? You know it won’t work on me, right?” 

I didn’t want to use it on him. “The only thing that would work on you is if I had your mark and the first blade. I just want it back. It means a lot to me, and –“ 

He flipped it around, so the handle was towards me, which I wasn’t really expecting. I hesitantly took it back from him, and he said, “You looking for a new sparring partner? I know Cas used to be it, but I think I’m more your speed now that he’s human . . . I mean even if I’m a demon, I’m immune, right? I won’t kill you, and you can’t kill me.” 

_What makes him think he’s still immune from wanting to kill me? And why is he asking to come with us?_

“Come on, I know you miss it . . . being able to cut loose like that.” He looked around to make sure we were still alone and tried a different approach. “Sam’s planning on curing me, and that’ll mean that eventually, this mark is coming off. If I’m not here, that won’t happen.” 

True. But our timeline was mark free except for presumably Cain who’d kept a low profile during the outbreak and was presumably doing just fine keeping Amara locked up out there somewhere on his own. What if this Dean needed to be stopped, and one of the Deans we had with us now decided to get his own mark to take this Dean out? What if they all melded into my Dean and the mark my Dean was never going to get, he now got . . . no, I couldn’t let that happen. “I, uh, I don’t think you’ll play well with the others.” 

He smiled before he got a little closer and said, “I’ll play well with you. I already gave your blade back, didn’t I?” 

Well, yeah, but that didn’t mean – 

“I could be your dirty little secret on the side.” 

_I don’t need a dirty secret on the side._

“You sure about that?” 

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Right . . . you’re sure now, but what happens the next time he takes off, and let’s face it, he will. Right now he’s being good, because he’s got some competition, but that’ll only work for so long. Pretty soon he’ll start thinking they’re better than him. If he knew his competition was a demon, I think he’d stay in line better, but even if it doesn’t, we could have a hell of a lot of fun . . . won’t even notice that he’s gone.” 

He got a little closer and said, “I’m a demon . . . That has forbidden written all over it. We’ll keep it secret . . . I’ll do the dominant thing with you, and I won’t hurt you if that’s not what you’re into.” 

“What the hell are you talking about? I don’t want –“

“Deep down, I think you do. If you’re worried about hurting my feelings, I’m a demon. I don’t have feelings, so anytime you want to call it quits, just say the word, and I won’t care.” 

That’s a lie. He’s a special demon.

His head cocked to the side while he got a little closer. “Special, huh? You think I’m the kind of demon that –“ 

I looked up at him and said, “Cain gave up killing for a woman, so I know he loved her . . . maybe she was even his soul mate.” 

He came right up to me and said, “So even with me like this, you wanna look out for me?” Yeah, I guess I did, but that didn’t mean I wanted to fuck him or bring him with us. He was up to something, even if it was just that he was bored and trying to fuck with me to alleviate said boredom. “I’m trying to fuck with you, but not the way you think.” I smiled at that, and he said, “Look, I think your attractive, but I’ve had hotter and way hotter, so it’s not that. I’m not looking for love or someone to take care of me. I just want to fuck you the way you need to be fucked . . . and be your sparring partner.”

The only one of those I needed was a sparring partner I couldn’t kill. 

“See, I knew you’d think that was a good idea. I think it might be enough to almost curb the cravings I get . . . almost. You’re Dad’ll probably have to heal you a lot, but I won’t kill you . . . I think you almost get it . . . like when you were wiping out that Vamp Army, that’s the most alive you’d felt in a long time. You’re always chasing that rush. You just don’t need to kill to get it. For you it’s more about the rush you get from demolishing an opponent that’s stronger than you. That’s your drug of choice, and if you see me as your opponent and know you can’t kill me, you’ll go all out on me . . . think we’ll both get something out of it.” 

It would be kind of awesome to . . . “Can you teleport, use telekinesis, the whole nine yards?” He grinned, so I said, “What about the red smiting power?” 

He started focusing more on my mouth and said, “I could learn, and if you want anyone to go to Hell with you and take out whoever is running the place now, I’m all in.” 

“You wouldn’t hurt Cerebus?” 

He shook his head with another grin and said, “Not if you don’t want me to . . . wouldn’t be playing nice if I killed one of your dogs . . . or your Dad. He’s off limits too.” 

_He’s saying all the right things. What does he want? Maybe he wants to do a runner before Sam can cure him?_

“If Sam’s supposed to catch up to me 7 or 8 weeks after D day . . . The clock is running down, but now that I know the when and how, I could keep it from happening. That’s not it. There’s nothing for me here.” 

The human him wouldn’t think –

“The human me could never do what he wanted, when he wanted, guilt free. And I sure as hell don’t need Sam. Plus, I’m stronger as a demon, so I can handle the mark better. Look at Cain. He’s given it up for like 150 years.” 

_Did give it up. He’s back on it now._

“I don’t care. So, when are we getting out of here?” 

I stopped watching his lips and said, “Shouldn’t you –“ 

He smiled again and said, “Just catching that now, huh? I feel fine, just had to get used to it first.” I guess I did too, because I didn’t feel sick at all with him pressed up against me. 

“Seriously, you’re trouble . . . I can’t bring you with us. Dean just killed –“

“The other you, yeah, I know . . . If you don't bring me with you, what else are you gonna do with me?”

I didn’t know. There’s no way he’d sit around and let us cure him. He didn’t want to be cured anyway, and I didn’t want to force something like that on him if it wasn’t what he wanted. “Get the mark off of you without –“

“And make me easier prey? I don’t think so. I’m staying this way. So, it looks like you have to bring me.”

“No, it doesn’t . . . we’ll figure –“

“something else out? . . . Yeah, I doubt it. Can I ask you something?” 

_Yeah, what?_

“I felt you probably the second you showed up here. You didn’t feel me?” 

_No, I had my mind on other things._

“Seal milk, I know . . . You know everyone in your group treats you like your fragile . . . you’re not. The only thing that makes you weak is all of them . . . No. I won’t kill them. What fun would it be sneaking around behind their backs if they were dead? Just thought you should know. So, when are we getting out of here?” 

Looking into his eyes, I answered, “You seem to know everything. I’m guessing you already know about the going nowhere thing if you die, but you can’t die unless someone else with the Mark of Cain uses the First Blade on you. Our Cain is still a beekeeper as far as I know. You know all you have to say is you want to go, and then we go. Why haven’t you done that yet?” 

He smiled again and said, “Just waiting for you to agree to my terms.” 

Oh. “You want me to make sure they don’t cure you?” 

“Yeah, that’d be good. Hey, you know what else would be good? Letting me make you feel good . . . fucking and fighting. What do you say?” 

“No, I’m not – “

“If you don’t agree, I’ll still go, but maybe I’ll make my conditions for signing on with Chuck, something like . . . your Dean and I go through as the same person. I mean that’s the real reason you don’t want me to come with you, right? You don’t want that to happen when we get back to your universe even if you have no idea if that’ll really happen, and Chuck and your Dad didn’t say that or even hint at that.”

“That’s not playing very nice.”

“I know, but I will after this. Just have to get what I want first.” 

“It’s not even possible. You either have to agree to go or not go. You can’t put conditions like that on it.”

“You sure about that, or am I just the first one who figured out I could?” It looked like we were going to be here for a while, because I wasn’t agreeing to his terms or his blackmail.


	52. Sam Unhinged

“What the hell just happened?” Sam looked at the Dean that’d said that and shrugged. He was dressed, because he and Dean had been at the bar, but the other 2 Deans, Sam, and Cas all seemed to be wearing just their t-shirts and boxers, so they must’ve been asleep. Now they were in the middle of another street in another nondescript town. Rogue was here . . . 3 Deans. Their bags were at their feet. Gabriel looked annoyed and had lipstick he was trying to wipe off his mouth before Beth saw him. Something seemed off. 

Sam looked at the group again, and then it finally dawned on him. The only Dean dressed was different. “Where’s my brother?”

The new Dean smirked, and Beth said, “He, uh . . . He . . . Chuck said we might be split up, didn’t he? Maybe Dean got drafted to do another Beth killing mission, because he was so good at the last one.” 

Sam turned to look back at Beth. “He didn’t say we would be split up. He said –“

Beth quickly said, “He did . . . Dean asked, and Chuck said, we could be split up, but then we’d go onto the next job when one was finished, not that we’d go onto the next job together or that we wouldn’t be split up between timelines . . . He dodged it . . . Maybe our training is coming to an end.” 

The other Sam asked, “What training?” Beth, seeming more than a little jumpy, turned to look at him and said, ‘He, uh, well, Chuck likes training, doesn’t he . . . He knew we’d probably start picking up other versions of ourselves, so maybe he wanted us to train as a team, and now we have, and . . . maybe Dean graduated.”

She looked pale. Sam’s eyes narrowed, while he leaned closer to her and said, “Why are you about to have a panic attack? If that’s all it is, then –“

“I don’t know, Sam . . . maybe it’s because I don’t know how long this is going to be or how many more of these we have to do . . . maybe splitting up is better if we’re going to do them faster, but it’s not something I really want to do either. What if he needs back up?”

“Why don’t I believe you? You’re usually a much better liar than this . . . Why’d you go out and pick up another Dean? I mean maybe we’re only allowed so many, and you got my brother kicked off the team! What did you do?” 

The new Dean told him to cool it. “What did she go find you in the bar, and –“ 

“Dressed like that? No, I tracked her down while she was asleep . . . You all have ridiculous names for each other . . . Probably call me Demon Dean.” 

His eyes flashed black, and Beth immediately added, “Yeah, uh, he already has the Mark, and none of you can kill him, so don’t even try. If he stayed much longer, his Sam would’ve found him, and then he would’ve cured him. He doesn’t want to be cured.” 

Everyone turned to look at her, and she shrugged. She was calming down and starting to get it together enough to put a positive spin on this. “What? He can control the Mark better as a demon, and he’s not bad. He just doesn’t feel guilty about anything anymore . . . oh, and he likes to kill, but he can put that to good use when we take him back home with us.” 

Sam went from studying her to looking over his shoulder at Demon Dean when he heard him say, “It removes that target you put on her back if she’s not the only one who can keep you in check anymore, right Sam?” Beth gave Demon Dean a look that said she wanted him to behave, and Demon Dean chose to ignore her. “So, it looks like your theory on Light vs. Dark was right, just not for you and Beth . . . She and I feel sick to stand too close to each other.” 

Beth relaxed a little. “Yeah, that’s true . . . He’s got all these really cool powers though. He went memory surfing and got our story out of me before I even woke up, and he can teleport and use telekinesis, and he’s going to learn how to use a red smiting power on demons that he can’t do yet. And he’s going to be my new sparring partner, since I can’t kill him.” 

Sam was still dreaming, right? They didn’t seriously just bring a demon with them and lose his brother. Sam looked back at Beth. This was her fault. “What is this, show and tell? He’s a Knight of Hell, right?” 

“Yeah, and guess what Knight of Hell hasn’t showed up in our universe yet . . . He can take care of Abaddon just fine.” 

Black Jack Dean said, “If he can take her out, I’m sold,” which surprised Sam. Black Jack Dean shrugged and said, “What? She’s a bad bitch . . . He’s already got the Mark. The damage is done. It’s not like there are any doubts about what the Mark does now, so none of us are going to get it . . . might need him if we come up against anymore of us who have the Mark in these different universes too.” 

The other Sam looked like he thought that was an insane way to look at it. “Yeah, but I’m still not seeing why he has to be a demon if we can cure him . . . I mean we cured the other Beth in the last timeline.” 

Demon Dean was quick to say, “Yeah, and how’d that work out for you guys?” 

Beth changed the subject. “Aren’t you guys cold? Shouldn’t we maybe, I don’t know . . . at least –“ 

Sam interrupted her. “No, we shouldn’t. We need to figure out what to do here. They aren’t pets, Beth. You can’t just keep collecting Deans.” 

Beth exhaled slowly and said, “Our Dean made the decision to come on his own without anyone influencing him.” Then she pointed at Green Dean and said, “Our brother and his brother convinced him this was something he had to do.” Then she pointed at Black Jack Dean and said, “Admittedly, he was in a bad place, but he made the decision after talking with that Dean.” Then she pointed at Demon Dean and said, “Already decided to come with us before I even woke up. The only ones collecting Deans are the Deans.” 

Hm. Sam hadn’t really noticed that, but maybe there was something to what she was saying. He glanced at the other Sam and said, “We are definitely outnumbered.” 

The other Sam looked at Cas. “Not as much as him, but I don’t think he plays nice with other Castiels . . . maybe we could try to pick him up a human Cas.” His voice grew more serious when he added, “Are we seriously talking about a shopping list of people we need to get when there is a Knight of Hell with us now?” 

Beth sat down on the ground, and when everyone looked at her, she said, “No, please, do continue. You’re all standing around in your underwear. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.” Sam laughed, and he might’ve been the only one, but he thought it was funny, and it was good to see her the way she was now compared to how she’d been when they first got here. Maybe things really would be okay, and maybe now without Dean around his goal of getting rid of the other Deans would be a lot easier. 

He bent down to unzip his bag, so he could make sure he still had everything and said, “Other than the fact, that he’ll probably kill us if we try to cure him, tell me why it’s important that he stays a demon. Dean as a human would never want that.” 

“But he isn’t human. He’s a demon. If we cure him, it’s only a matter of time before he goes back to being a demon or worse. It’d be cruel to force a human Dean to go through something like that.” Maybe. He bet the human Dean would still want to come up for air even if it wasn’t for very long. “Plus, it’s his choice. I think he seems fairly happy . . . if you cure him, the fact that he’s left his Sam will hit him hard. That would be cruel too.” 

Hadn’t thought of that. “Gabriel? Thoughts?” Sam looked at the other Sam, who’d said that, and then over at Gabriel. 

“I’m on the no-kill list, so what do I care?” 

Demon Dean grinned. “Where were you before we came here . . . Bet your more fun than Crowley.” Beth looked up at her Dad and shook her head in disapointment, so Gabriel gave Demon Dean a glare for drawing Beth’s attention to the state of him until Demon Dean said, “Relax. It’s not like she didn’t see it. You and me are gonna start hanging out.” 

_Why would –_

Demon Dean looked at Sam and said, “Gabriel needs to get out more often. His daughter is cramping his style.” 

Directing his attention back to Beth, Sam asked if she was really okay with all of this. He couldn’t imagine a demon corrupting her Dad was on a list of things she wanted to have happen. Hanging her head, Beth answered, ,“As long as I don’t have to hear what they get up to when they’re not around, I think Dad could use a friend that’s more at his level. And I guess we won’t all be around forever.” 

_More at his level?_

Demon Dean made a point of answering Sam’s thoughts again. “Yeah, I’m in the Big Leagues now . . . He could keep me in check by sending me to another planet if he wanted, but he can’t kill me, and I can kill anything with the First Blade, but like he said, he’s on the no-kill list. I know he knows how to have a good time . . . He’s spent thousands of years having it . . . In a thousand years, after your universe gets back up and running, I could call him up to go raise some Hell, and he’d be up for it. He’s gonna be my new drinking buddy.” 

Sam checked Beth’s reaction, and she shrugged. “I told you he’s not bad . . . All he wants is to have fun and not care about the consequences . . . maybe kill the odd demon or whatever to control his urges. And maybe he has more of a temper, but who wouldn’t if they were a demon? As long as Dad doesn’t tell him what to do, they should be fine. At least Dad could go blow off steam with him in healthier ways than going nuclear in Bermuda solo.” 

_I don’t even know what that means._

Demon Dean seemed to enjoy getting in Sam’s head, because he answered that for him. “Means hanging out with me is a better alternative to doing what you saw him do at the Devil’s Gate in Wyoming when he needs to calm down about his daughter.” 

“How do you know about what happened at the Devil’s Gate in Wyoming?” 

Raising her hand, Beth said, “I told you he went memory surfing while I was asleep.” 

So, that was all it took for him to get a complete dossier on all of them? “How the hell did you let that happen? Did you forget your wards and everything else you know? How the hell did you not wake up with him in your room for as long as that must’ve taken?” 

“He’s a demon who lived his whole life as a hunter. He knows all the same tricks we do. He woke me up when he wanted me to wake up . . . not sure how. Maybe it was when he got close enough to take my angel blade?” 

He took her angel blade? “Seriously, Beth? Rogue was with you! It’s your job to –“ 

Sam felt something hit him in the knee and was looking down to see what it was when he suddenly went flying and landed on his back. Quickly sitting up, he looked back at the group. Most of them were openly laughing. Rogue looked down at her hand in shock. Beth was trying not to laugh while she called Rogue over to lecture her about hitting. _Gabriel or Demon Dean? Gabriel or Demon Dean?_ Demon Dean was giving him a smirk, so Sam was going to go ahead and say it was him. “Nice. You’re just going to encourage her to keep hitting people.” 

Demon Dean shrugged. “Hitting people or protecting her Mom? Is that really such a bad thing? And she has some right hook for a 2 year old . . . might as well let her know she’s got it right.” This is the guy on their team who’d replaced his brother? Where the hell was Dean? Was he in another universe? Was he home looking after the kids at the camp? Was he just gone? Maybe if they got rid of some of these Deans they’d get him back. 

\-----------------

“Hey Beth? Can you come look at this rash Rogue picked up on your Dad’s most recent safari?” Beth quickly came into the room at the sound of Sam’s voice, and stopped when she didn’t see Rogue. Instead, she looked up at him in confusion, and then she heard the other Sam shut the door behind her. When she turned to look at the supposedly good Sam, Sam knocked her out. 

“Did you have to hit her so hard?” 

Yeah, he did. “I had to make sure she went out.” Sam checked Beth for a pulse. She had one, so she’d be fine. He started tying her up, and when he was done with that, stuffed her in the closet. As soon as she was secure, he shut the door on her and made sure the door wouldn’t open by shoving a chair under the handle. 

“Wouldn’t happen to be setting a trap for me, would you?” Sam looked behind him. Well, that was fast. The other night at the bar, Sam’s brother had been telling him about how the other Deans were becoming connected to her or already were. Sam had thought that maybe with his brother out of the way, their bonds with her would grow, so one of them would know she’d taken a hard hit if it was a hard enough hit. Since they were all a couple of hours away from here, he thought they’d send Demon Dean here to check it out. Demon Dean had shown up even faster than Sam had thought he would, and Sam guessed he shouldn’t really be all that surprised. Demon Dean could throw all the insults Beth’s way that he wanted, but there was something there even with him, or Demon Dean would’ve told the other two to screw off, so he could kill something or see strippers or whatever else he wanted to do other than check on Beth.

And would you look at that. Demon Dean was definitely a demon. The other Sam threw some holy water on him, and there was plenty of smoking and sizzling. Sam used the distraction to pull the cuffs out of his pocket. He was really glad he took the time to watch those DVDs that Beth gave them in that do-over life. This’d worked on that show, so he figured it’d work here, and it did. 

Looking up at the other Sam, he gave him a relieved smile. “Thanks . . . Come on, let’s get him up. We can’t do this here.” 

“I thought we were just trapping him until the others got back, so we could talk some sense – “ 

Demon Dean was seething and let it be known how much he hated both Sams right now with his look and tone. “He played you. Why the hell do you think he had to knock Beth out? You think it was just so you two could send a message to us? A demon wearing his brother’s face and who can’t die is his wet dream.” 

Sam looked at the other Sam, shrugged, and said, “Sorry,” as he pulled out the taser and used it to put the other Sam down. Maybe he should’ve killed the other Sam, but he had plans for that Sam. If he got Demon Dean out of here, and took his time about it, the other Deans would need someone to lead them to him, and the best person to do that was the other Sam. By the time they got there, his ambush would be complete, and then he’d have a chance to get rid of all of them . . . he may not be able to kill Demon Dean, but there were other ways of getting rid of that problem . . . just not until he got rid of the others first.


	53. Fast Endings

_What’s happening? Okay. Think. Why are the lights turned out? Are my eyes closed?_

I tried to reach up and touch my face. My hands were tied behind my back. 

_Where’s my angel blade? Not here. What’s the last thing I remember? Sam and Sam . . . both of them were acting sketchy. Did they knock me out? Why would they knock me out? I hear someone out there. Guard? Could be a trick. Don’t let them know you’re awake. How do I get out of here without them knowing? Get untied first? Good plan. How do I do that? Uh, see if they took your lucky silver knife?_

I maneuvered my body until I could reach for it in my boot. _Ah, lucky silver knife, you never fail me._ Using it to cut the zip ties around my wrists first, I then made fast work of the ones around my ankles. _Amature hour._

Feeling around the walls, I tried to find an exhaust vent or something I could use to climb out. _No way am I fitting in there. It’s entirely too small. Chuck, could you get me out of here and give me every tool I'll need to do whatever it is I have to do when I get out of here._

I was standing outside the motel a second later. Going back to look in the window, I saw one of the Sams on the floor. He was moving around some, so he was alive. No guesses on which one it was. My Sam had already tasered him once. It looked like he’d gotten him again considering the gun was still lying on the floor. 

_What’s that on the floor near him? Is that a bottle of holy water? Well, it all makes sense now, you scheming fuckers. Just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? . . . Sam took Dean out of here alone and tasered the other Sam, why? He wanted to do something the other Sam was against? If they were just going to cure him, they’d take him somewhere near here, so they could have some privacy while they did the cure, but why knock the other Sam out if that’s all they were going to do. Dean had been confrontational with him from the word go. He knocked Sam on his ass yesterday. Maybe Sam wants to kill him? Even if he cures him, he can’t kill him though. And the more of the cure he does, the easier it is for Dean to get out of those restraints, and Sam knows that, because he watched those DVDs, so this isn’t about curing him, or at least not all the way . . . He just wants to cure him enough to hurt him by doing the cure and weaken him maybe so he can hurt him doing other things? Dad’s therapy session definitely did not work._

I turned away from the window to scan the parking lot as the Sam on the floor rolled over. If Sam took Dean out of here in cuffs, he wouldn’t have taken him to one of the nearby buildings . . . too many people around here, and this could get loud. He would’ve taken him to a car to transport him somewhere else . . . somewhere quiet. _That car at the back is the one I’ll take._

On my way to the car, I felt around my pockets to see what Chuck had given me. Handgun. Tranq gun too? I pulled out the cartridges for the tranq gun that were in my pocket . . . They weren’t clear, and they weren’t red from blood . . . I smelled one. Interesting. Actual tranq darts. They were for Sam, I guess. I felt my angel blade firmly strapped to my thigh. That was good. I mostly needed that for comfort, I guess, or I hoped. It wouldn’t do any good on Dean, and I hoped I didn’t have to use it on Sam. It depended on what he was doing when I got there. 

When I got to the car, I pulled my slim-jim out of my sleeve. If Sam had taken Dean out of here by car, then it looked like I was on the right track if God wanted me to steal a car too. 

_Did Sam already have a place picked out, or is he just going to drive around until he finds somewhere he wants?_ I hoped he had to drive around for a while. It’d buy me time. Now how should I find them? I guess Demon Dean knew I was in his timeline as soon as I got there. Maybe if I drove around, I’d find him, like a Demon-Dean tracker? I still had no idea if my Dean was hidden under there with all the rest or not . . . I just know I didn’t sleep with Demon Dean, and I refused to agree to it, and now my Dean was gone. Maybe what I’d said about Dean being given a solo-mission was right, or maybe Sam was right when he said we had too many Deans. Maybe Demon Dean had made it a condition that Dean had to be sent home so I’d think my Dean was a part of Demon Dean now . . . It didn’t matter. I’d never let any Dean be Sam’s prey.

A few hours later, I thought that trying to find Sam was taking too long, and Chuck wasn’t just sending me there the way I asked. _Come on, focus, Beth._

I pulled over and thought about it . . . _Light and dark. Opposite sides to the same coin. Feel for it . . . Really concentrate on the darkness in the universe . . . Focus, focus, focus . . . focus on how it made you feel when you were surrounded by it . . . feel for it . . . remember Adriel . . . No, not him. He got dark towards the end, but you need darker. The rib spreaders . . . the flogging of my organs . . . the Punishing angels . . . come on you merciless dicks . . . where’s your goddamn signature now?_

I felt a twinge pull at my center, and it felt hot just like it did when we were outside where Michael was being worked over by the Punishing angels. _Follow that. Hotter means closer, and colder means further._ I didn’t know if Chuck made that happen or not, but I was holding onto it for dear life as I started the car.

Maybe 20 minutes later, I pulled up outside a big blocky building and shook my head. Another fucking warehouse . . . I think Alistair was full of shit. All the bad shit went down in warehouses. Walking around the building, I stopped when I got to the back. There was a light on in a window on right hand corner, second story. That was it. I could hear roaring, so I knew Dean was in there, and the signature on my soul was burning really fucking hot. There was a door below the window, but I wasn’t going to use it in case it was booby-trapped. When they expect you to come in the back, come in the front. 

Breaking in was relatively easy, so I was cautious in case it was that easy for a reason. I went around to the right of the building if the room I wanted was on my left at the back. There were no trip wires that I could see, but that didn’t mean that there couldn’t have been if I’d taken the corridors to the left. About halfway down the building, I heard the roaring again, and it got louder the closer I got. It was pretty constant. _What the fuck is he doing to him? . . . He’s not curing him anyway. That’d be over and done with in a minute or so after each injection . . . I didn’t think Dean as a demon could be hurt like this. I thought he could heal himself straight away . . . Apparently, we were wrong.”_

When I got to where the room was, I went to check the door below it that led outside . . . It’s a good thing I hadn’t come in that way. Making my way back to the door I wanted on the second floor, I went through my options. _He chose this door for a reason. It can't be kicked open. If I pull it open, there’s probably something on the other side, like a grenade with a string attached to the door to pull the pin or a shotgun with a string wrapped around a trigger. If they expect you to come in a door, don’t go in through a door. Look up . . . cardboard ceiling panels. That’s our way in._

Demon Dean couldn’t die. He could suffer apparently, but not die, so he had some time. I needed to get this right. I walked about halfway down the hall, used my angel blade to cut one of the cork panels out of ceiling and let it fall to the floor. Between his roaring, and the distance from the room, Sam shouldn’t have heard that. 

Taking a step back, I kicked off the nearest wall, and just like when I jumped up to grab my rope on my big red barn in Vermont, used the the momentum to grab ahold of the ceiling panels and grunted and clawed my way up through the hole. Pausing to make sure I hadn’t been heard, I began crawling towards the sound of Dean’s voice. You know what else likes warehouses other than evil? Rats apparently. I didn’t see any, but I definitely saw little presents they’d left behind for anyone to find. 

_Stop letting your mind wander. Be prepared for anything when you go through that ceiling . . . Ignore what you here in there. Shut down what you’re feeling . . . Now . . . Done._

Silently getting to roughly where I heard Dean below me, I stood as tall as I could given my limitations with the corrugated roof above me, jumped up and down right through the nearest ceiling panel. On the way down, I caught sight of Dean. I caught sight of Sam, took aim and fired . . . the signature went cold in my chest, and I landed in a crouch before looking over my shoulder at Dean. Standing to walk over to him, I assessed the damage. “Can I?” 

He grunted out, “Do what you have to do, but keep it locked down until it's done, so you can.” Climbing up behind him, I jammed my angel blade behind his wrists to get them un-nailed from the beam behind him. He fell to the ground in a heap when the weight was released. There was little to no movement from him after that. Getting down, I rolled him over, got to work picking the demon handcuffs open, so I could take them off, and then scratched a thin line in the devil’s trap with my angel blade, so he wouldn’t be as weak. 

“He was pouring holy water inside you?” I got a nod and a grunt in the affirmative, so I took my tranq gun out, loaded it with the normal tranq darts, and shot him a couple of times in the neck. He could get drunk. This should help take some of the edge off. He relaxed a lot, and stayed silent, but awake, while I put his guts back into the places they were supposed to be, pushed his lungs and ribs back together and used my arms to try and hold everything in place. It was taking a while for him to heal, but I think that was because of the holy water. 

Maybe 10 minutes later, I didn’t have to hold him together anymore, but I think he still felt the holy water burning inside him, because he was sweating and shaking. “You want another dose of tranquilizer?“ 

He shook his head. “How’d . . . you . . . find me?” 

Looking down at my chest, I answered, “One of the signatures on my soul lead me to Sam.” 

He gripped my hand and started shaking harder. “Was trying to let you know where I was . . . thought maybe –“ 

“I think you let me know what was happening to you instead. I kept picturing rib splitters and the angels slicing and dicing my organs . . . guess that’s what the holy water was doing to you. It’s the closest way I could relate from personal experience.” 

Curling in on himself more, Dean clutched my hand harder while he gasped out, “Better than nothing.” 

He was really struggling. This wouldn’t do at all. I rolled him onto his back, so I could crawl over him. I wanted him to focus on my eyes, answer the questions I had, and do what I said. I could help him if he did all that. “Where does it burn?” 

His eyes flashed black in rage, but he made them to go back to normal and gritted out, “Where doesn’t it burn?” 

That answer actually told me a lot. “Don’t worry about your eyes. I want you to pinpoint one place that’s burning . . . Start at the bottom, lower right quadrant of your torso. All you have to do is find one spot . . . Let me know when you have it. Just a nod will do.” His eyes went black straight away, and now he could use all of his mental energy to focus on locating what I’d asked him to find. He was still shaking and pouring sweat, but I think he was trying. 

He nodded a few minutes later, so I said, “Don’t run away from that little fire. Don’t fan it and make it bigger. Let it burn you, but keep it small . . . Try to put it out. Nod when you have.” 

Maybe 5 minutes later, he nodded, so I said, “Use part of your concentration to keep it out, but move the rest of your concentration to your left until you get to the next fire. Do the same thing with that one. It should be a little faster this time. Nod when you have.” 

3 minutes later, he was a lot calmer and not sweating as much when he nodded, so I said, “Leave some of your concentration on keeping it out, but move the rest to your left . . . if there are no more to your left, move up and start moving right. Let me know when the next one is out.” 

20 minutes later, he was done and calm as could be. “You’re stronger than I ever was. I had to let it go as soon as they left. I think you can hold on until the holy water is gone.” He opened his mouth to say something, and I shook my head. “Just concentrate on doing what you’re doing and breathing for now.” 

He smiled, but gave me another nod, and 5 minutes later said, “Like the eyes.” 

_What?_

“The color . . . this is what it’s like when you tap into your soul?” I nodded. “Think I’m in one piece now. Have been for a while. You can let it go.” I shook my head. “It drains you. You’re a lot dimmer now than you were. Not sure what it’s going to do to your mark, but I’m imaging mobs with pitchforks.” 

I couldn’t let myself feel anything until I was done dealing with Sam. “No.” 

He put his hand on the side of my face and said, “Let it go. I’ll take care of it.” 

“No, I –“ The next thing I knew I was outside looking at the dirt. I tried getting a foot under me, and I just couldn’t do it. As soon as I knew I wouldn’t get back up there in time to do anything before he could, I just sort of let everything go, collapsed onto my side, and curled up into a ball. I had nothing left. 

15 minutes later, I heard footprints coming towards me, but didn’t feel like moving to see who’s they were. I was too busy watching the warehouse go up in flames until a pair of boots stopped in front of me, and I couldn’t see the fire anymore. “You just gonna lay there?” 

That sounded like a pretty good idea to me. “I thought you’d steal my car and leave me here.” 

“Actually got half way down the road and decided to come back. Figured I owe you for what happened in there. Since I came back we’re even.” 

“I don’t think I can actually get up right now.” 

Turning to leave, he called back, “Well, I’m not carrying you, so . . . the car’s out front, right?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I’ll wait for you there.” He disappeared, and I sighed before using all the muscles in my body to push up onto my hands and knees. I couldn’t walk, but I could maybe crawl. I stopped halfway towards the back half of the burning warehouse when a pair of headlights came around the building to my left. Then I started crawling towards the car. I was willing to do anything to not have to think about what I just did. 


	54. Planning for Mobs with Pitchforks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is from Demon Dean's point of view.

“I thought you weren’t going to carry me.” 

Yeah, well, it was all part of him owing her for what she did for him back there. “You were taking too long.” 

She sighed and asked, “What’s the hurry?” 

“Thought you had a daughter to get back to.” That earned him a quick glance in his direction, but that was about it. She was right. He hadn’t done it to get her to her daughter faster. Her daughter was out all day with Gabriel and came home at night to stay with her. It’s why she’d stayed behind when he and the other Deans went out. Her nighttime ritual with her daughter was important to her though, so he’d thought it sounded good. “We need to get our stories straight before we get back.”

“What’s to get straight? I killed him. I’ll tell them that. Just don’t say anything to contradict it, and things will be fine.”

That was a bad idea. “I don’t even think we should go back right now.” That got her full attention. “I wasn’t kidding about the mobs with pitchforks. You shouldn’t be anywhere near the Sam at the motel . . . maybe even Cas. He’s human too, and neither one could be Michael’s ‘true’ vessel. The motel Sam’s brother . . . I'm calling him the Boy Scout . . . now that the Boy Scout's seen what happens when his brother starts to go wrong, and after you tell him what your Sam did . . . maybe he’ll think that taking you out will be the only way to keep that from happening to his brother. That Sam and Dean will always choose each other first. Your Dean had to go through years of Hell with your Sam to get to a point where he’d choose you. That’ll never happen with them . . . They’re too reliant on each other now.”

At least she seemed partially interested in what he’d said that time. “What about the other Dean?”

“The solo-Dean? He wouldn’t let that happen, but it’d be two against one, because the Boy Scout’s brother wouldn’t let him go up against that Dean alone, and maybe they’ll go through him, Cas, and Gabriel just to get rid of you . . . Who knows when it’ll happen? Maybe the problems with that Sam will start straight away, like as soon as you walk through the door, or maybe they’ll take time the way they did with your Sam . . . either way it’s not good for you.”

He swerved when Gabriel landed in the backseat, and it pissed him off. No way should something like that catch him off guard, and now a car felt way too crowded. “Did you ask your Dad for advice?” She nodded, and he thought about just teleporting out of the driver’s seat and letting her Dad figure out how to get her out of the car before it crashed. Instead, he gave Gabriel a death glare in the rearview mirror and said, “Tell her I’m right.” 

Gabriel looked at Beth, and Beth said, “I did the right thing. They’ll see that won’t they . . . Even if they weren’t there, and he’s a demon, they’ll see that Sam having him in a blood eagle, disemboweled, and splashing him full of holy water meant that Sam had to go . . . And he had that place set up, like he was just waiting for them to come through the door and be distracted enough by the gore that they wouldn’t notice the trip the wires . . . Plus, he drank some of his blood. Just couldn’t help himself with the temptation, I guess, which is just . . . I mean, come on, he looks just like his brother. There were definitely some issues there . . . Life on another planet didn’t work.” 

Gabriel looked from Beth to Dean and said, “I don’t know . . . It might’ve worked too well. Eliminate the temptation to do bad by doing a few more bad things seems to be what he was trying to do . . . And maybe it might’ve pushed him over the edge to get some of his frustrations out on someone who couldn’t die. If he gave into that, then he might as well have been a living, breathing, man-demon . . . Can’t have more than one of those on the team at one time, can we? When the other one has a bigger bark than bite, go with the least worst option.”

 _Shut up, Gabriel._ “But she shouldn’t tell them, right? Or go back, cause look at her soul. She’s dim, and I’m guessing that’ll mean the Sam and maybe even Cas back at the motel go postal on her. That’ll turn the Boy Scout against her, and then he and his brother will take out the rest of you.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Just want her all to yourself, don’t you?” Dean turned to give him another glare, and Gabriel smirked. “Throw all the black eyes you want my way. I’m on the no-kill list, and you intend on keeping that promise, so what do I care?” Then Gabriel looked at his daughter and said, “Do what you think is right, and I’ll back your play. Rogue’s already in bed, and Cas is there, so you have a little time if you want to think about it,” before he disappeared.

The first thing out of Dean’s mouth was, “He didn’t say I was wrong.”

“I know.”

“So, if we do go back, we’ll tell ‘em that he took me. I got loose, and I shot him.”

“You’re a demon. You can lie better than that. Where the hell am I in your lie?”

Smiling, he said, “I was thinking I’d knock you out . . . tell ‘em Sam did it again when you got there. That way I come out the hero when I bring you back.” His grin fell, and then he added, “Don’t tell them you did it, and don’t tell them you did it for me.” 

She glanced at him, and then back out the window before saying, “It’s not like I can lie to them . . . except for Cas and the good Sam.”

“Block them.”

“Too tired.”

“Then we just won’t go back right now.”

She shook her head and turned to face him again. “I know it hurts your Knight of Hell rep, but I think they’ll respect me more if I tell them what happened. I need to live up to their expectations, not come back knocked out and looking like I screwed up. They need to know I was flawless and why I did it. Cas has always believed I’d do the right thing with Sam, so he has to know I did, and the other Sam wanted Sam dead too. If he –“

“He’s just like all the other Sams, a whiney, know-it-all dickhead, who won’t like that you succeeded when he failed. If you don’t think Cas will be a problem, then bring him and the solo-Dean with us and ditch the Boy Scout and his brother.”

“No, I’m not doing that. I’m not leaving anyone behind.”

“Funny, I thought you left someone behind the night I met you. Forgetting about him already, huh?”

Sighing she went back to looking out the window, and then maybe 5 minutes later said, “I didn’t leave him behind though, did I?”

Dean didn’t know. He didn’t feel any different. Kinda thought either her Dean was waiting for them back in her universe or not. He didn’t even ask God for his condition on joining the team. One second, he’d been negotiating with her, and the next he was standing in the middle of a street somewhere else. “Why? Is that why you helped me back there? You thought you were helping him?”

She shook her head and looked out the window. “It was the right thing to do.”

“You sure about that?”

“Am I sure it was the right thing to do, or am I sure I helped you for you and not for my Dean if he’s in there with you?”

“Even I know it was the right thing to do.”

“I don’t think he’s in there with you. I just don’t know where you sent him, so I helped you for you.”

“You sure he’s not?”

“No, that’s why I’m fishing for answers from the only person who might have them. The best I can come up with is you wouldn’t actually want to share your body with anyone else, so he’s not in there with you.”

“Or now you can fuck me guilt free.”

She slowly turned to look at him and said, “You want me to feel guilt . . . remember . . . dirty little secret and all that . . . I –“

“Bet you’re feeling tons of that already. It’s your fault he’s gone.”

“The only way it’s my fault is if –“

“You underestimated me?”

“And God.”

“So, when we get back, you’re going to let me handle it, right?” Why’d she looked confused by that?

“Thought we already went over this. I killed him . . . I’ll tell them.”

“I actually meant whenever we see the dead Sam’s brother again. I’ll take the hit.”

She smirked and said, “So, you’re admitting you didn’t ask for him to –“

“Not saying that . . . Maybe he saw the whole thing same as I did, and who knows if what I asked for is permanent? Maybe you’ll have to face him again when you get home and tell him you killed his brother.” She went back to looking out the window, so he added, “Think you guys need me more than you thought for me to get a signing on bonus.”

He wasn’t expecting her to say, “You’re probably right,” so he decided to push it a little further.

“More important than him, and he was supposed to be the leader of this –“

“None of you are more important than the others.” 

Maybe not in the grand scheme of things, but . . . “Except that’s not true, at least not to you.” She shrugged, so he said, “Why aren’t you more upset?”

Glancing in his direction, she thought about it and answered, “It’s out of my hands . . . and I don’t think I know how to grieve a loss that big if he is gone . . . I’m waiting until I find out one way or the other.”

“I meant why aren’t you more upset about killing your Sam? Isn’t that something that should upset you? Thought that was why you held off on feeling anything.” Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was because she hadn’t wanted to feel anything being so close to him. 

“The signature went from being hot like lava to cold like ice when Sam died. And Chuck gave me everything I needed to take care of whatever I was walking into there. A gun, a tranq gun with real tranq darts, a slim-jim, and my angel blade. I never leave home without my angel blade. The slim-jim was for this car. The tranq gun was to help you, and that leaves the gun for Sam. I know Chuck’s a dick sometimes, but He knew what had to be done . . . On top of that, I took one look at you and one look at him, and I knew what I had to do. Sam had a chance, and he blew it . . . I did the right thing.” 

“So, that’s it? You did the right thing, and you don’t feel anything about it? Thought you had a hard time with that werewolf guy.”

She bit her bottom lip briefly in thought and said, “Not after . . . before. And I didn’t have time to feel anything before I had to act with Sam. Hurting innocents –“

“I’m not innocent.”

She smiled, and said, “You are in the ways that count . . . go on and throw an insult my way . . . I’m ready for it.” 

Kind of took the fun out of it if she told him to do it. “What do you see when you look at me?”

“You mean do I see you as more demon than man or more man than demon?” Well, he hadn't meant that, but now he wanted to know which of those she thought he was. He didn’t really feel like either one. Maybe with her soul-reading thing, she could tell. “I can’t really use it on Deans. I –“

“What about that feeling what we feel thing? Think you could do that? You’re probably better at understanding –“

“You feel . . . multi-layered is the only way I can explain it . . . a little like my Dean did when he was Michael’s vessel and Michael took over, except . . . it’s all you. You’re aware and present and . . . fractured a little . . . You’re a little cut off from how you feel . . . And maybe some of your carefree act is . . . I don’t know how to explain it, except that it’s your way of fighting your darker nature . . . sort of like the way you’ve used it your whole life to counteract it . . . Except the reason you do it now is because you don’t like to be forced to do anything, so the idea that you have to kill isn’t something you like, but underneath everything you feel, the thing you feel the most is alone. And you want to not care about that, but you do, so you’re frustrated, and that just makes you want to kill. There’s no guilt or self-hatred . . . no feeling of responsibility . . . You could be a very good demon or a very bad demon, but right now you’re not either, and I think that’s the way you want to keep it, which makes you good in my books . . . You can insult me now or go do something to prove me wrong though.”

Kind of took the fun out of it she said that too. “Shut up.” 

\-------------

“Don’t say that.” Beth looked up at him for an explanation. “Don’t open up by saying we need to add another Sam to the shopping list now.” She smiled and said she hadn’t planned on it, so he said, “Don’t even think it . . . the Boy Scout won’t think its funny . . . probably make him think it was way too easy for you to kill your Sam, and then your kid is gonna have to be raised by the C team, cause when they kill you, I can kill them.” 

She started wondering if Sam and Cas were going to chase her out of the motel, like a couple of zombies. That was probably the least-worst thing she’d thought of so far. It was like she had a death wish. He didn’t understand it anymore, but he knew how those Deans all thought when it came to their brothers. “You good?” She nodded. Good. Then he could just teleport in there with her and didn’t have to carry her all the way there.

“Where have you been? No calls. No notes. We –“ 

Dean sighed and said, “Oh, good, you’re back and not dead . . . Think that’s what people usually say when the last they knew, that person was knocked out, disappeared, and came back being carried through the door.” 

The way they treated her like a child pissed him off. A Dean or one Sam or both had been treating her that way since she got out of Heaven . . . At least the two worst ones for doing that were gone now . . . well, the Sam definitely was, but this Sam had apparently decided to take that Sam’s place on being a pain in the ass . . . Dean had his eye on him. Probably a good thing he had his hands full, or he’d just get rid of that problem right now. She’d wanted to stumble to the door by herself, but he thought this worked better for the theatrics of it . . . made her seem like less of a threat. Taking a deep breath, she said, “He went bad . . . really, really bad . . . I didn’t have a choice.” 

The ‘good’ Sam asked, “How bad?” Well, he’s the one she needed to win over to keep the Boy Scout in check, but he was a dickhead. There hadn’t been a need for the holy water. Maybe Dean had gone there to kill whatever had knocked her out until he saw it was a couple of dicks on his no-kill list, and maybe he might’ve thought about knocking them out to see how they liked it, but he was never going to kill them until the holy water got brought into it. 

“Black eyes, demon voice, and he had him nailed to a beam through his wrists.” She paused to look at Cas and asked, “Sound familiar?” Cas nodded. Cas seemed all right. He was mostly pissed off with the dead Sam, so he’d probably be all right. “Anyway, he went bad. I won't tell you what he did other than that, because that's private.” 

The ‘good’ Sam was onboard. Now Cas was worried about what this would do to his Dean. Somehow, Dean didn’t think that would be as big of a deal as Cas thought it would. It’d be a big deal, but not that big of a deal. That Dean had already been preparing himself for something like this. The other two Deans didn’t really know what to say. 

Cas finally said, “What about his body? Do we have to bring it with us, or –“

“You mean drag around a carcass from universe to universe? No. I burnt him.” He might’ve torn Sam to pieces first, but they didn’t need to know that. 

There were no mobs with pitchforks. It looked like his work here was done, so Dean put her down and was going to tell her that he was going to get out of here for a while, but she beat him to it. “Go ahead and do whatever it is you need to do.” Yeah, after the night he’d had, he was up for a good kill. He was just gonna go find a demon and be right back. Who knew when those mobs could show up?


	55. Sam's Brothers

Sam walked towards the room with bags of food. It was getting pretty late in the day, and they still hadn’t figured out why they were in this timeline. The universe with Saoirse had them all starting on the other side of the country from where they needed to be. The last one had them start near where they were supposed to be, but Demon Dean found them before they even started looking. There didn’t really seem to be a rhyme or reason to where they were being dropped now. Maybe there was, but he just couldn’t see it right now. 

Despite all the uncertainty, he felt like there might’ve been a little extra bounce in his step this morning. He hadn’t felt this light since he walked into his motel room and saw the evil Sam holding a baby and a gun on him.

He should’ve known better than to trust the evil Sam, but the plan had seemed simple enough. Knock Beth out to grab the attention of the other Deans, trap Demon Dean, and convince the others that curing Demon Dean was the right thing to do, because it’s what they’d all really want. Without Beth there to argue against it and presumably with Demon Dean raging away in his devil’s trap, the others would see sense. 

That’d been the plan. If they’d stuck with it, it would’ve been the right thing to do, but then the next thing he knew, the other Sam said they were taking him somewhere else to cure him right then and there, and that hadn’t been the plan. He hadn’t known why they needed to suddenly do it without the others. Then Demon Dean had asked why Beth needed to be knocked out if the plan had ever been what the evil Sam had said it was. 

It’d immediately reminded Sam of what the evil Sam had said about her being the only one who could stop him, and that’s about all he’d had time to think before electricity was coursing through his body again. He really hated being tased. When he’d been able to start moving around, he tried getting to the closet door to see if he could wake Beth up, and that’s when the others came back. 

He’d told them what happened, and his brother had asked how he’d fallen for something like that. He’d really just wanted to help the Dean trapped inside a demon. That’s all it was. It was like he could hear him begging to be let out, but they were just going to leave him in there. Sure, that Dean might go back to being a demon and the prospect of that would probably be frightening for him while he was still human, but even a few months to a year or longer would be worth it if he got another chance to be human again. 

Going through the door and straight over to the doorway between rooms, he checked in on Beth. It didn’t look like she’d moved a muscle since he left. “She’s still asleep?” 

His brother went from looking at his laptop to looking at her door. “Looks like it. Cas said she’ll wake up when she’s ready . . . She didn’t do this in Purgatory. I mean it’s not like you can sleep in Purgatory, but she just kept going like she was fine for the most part. I guess she did it for too long this time?” It would appear so. Cas had stayed with her and Rogue last night, because after what happened with Demon Dean the last time she was on her own, they all thought it was probably best if she wasn’t alone anymore. Rogue was with Gabriel right now. Cas was out doing something too, so Sam guessed they were on Beth-watch. 

“You think she’s depressed? Maybe –“

“Depressed? Who wouldn’t be after the lives they’ve had? That’s not what this is.”

“Yeah, but her Dean isn’t here. We have no idea where he is or if he’s coming back. She killed the other me . . . Now it’s just her, Rogue, Cas, and her Dad. Cas and her Dad are helping with Rogue, but with the rest of us –“

Scoffing, Dean turned back to his laptop. “What you think she has to babysit us? We did this a long time before we ever met them.”

Sam glanced at her again and said, “Yeah, but they’re in charge.”

Dean snorted and said, “They’re not in charge. They –“

“Yeah, they are, Dean. You know how she always used to tell Saoirse that knowledge is power? That’s true. We rely on them to give us the answers to what’s coming or what we should do because they’ve seen almost everything we’ve never even dreamed of seeing. Do you think it’s an accident they came from a timeline with 10 tablets? Those tablets covered everything from God to Death . . . maybe they destroyed those 2 tablets, and that’s probably a good thing, because nobody needs that much power, but what she read in those libraries in Heaven probably makes up for a lot what they destroyed . . . Face it. They’re in charge, and now she’s all that’s left.”

“Her Dad’s left. Cas is left, and –“

“Her Dad has to wait until he’s specifically asked to do something. Cas is an advisor, but she and her Dean are the ones who have been calling the shots.” Dean shook his head, and Sam added, “She was already feeling homesick, and now this? You saw how she freaked out when she thought her Dean was dead after we jumped into Demon Dean’s universe . . . I get the impression nothing rattles her, not angels, not demons, not Purgatory, and not meeting God, but that . . . that definitely did, and now he’s gone. She pulled it together when we got here without him, but she didn’t do that for her. She did it for us, cause she knows we have to believe she knows what she’s doing.”

“Gabriel sent the evil Sam to another planet to –“

“That was a threat he made him in their universe and allowed to follow through on. And that wasn’t to help. It was to punish . . . and you’re completely missing my point.”

Dean sighed in frustration before looking up at Sam. “What is the point, Sam? You want me to go out and steal her some Prozac? You think that’ll help?”

Sam shook his head. “No. I think you need to step up and be who her Dean wanted you to be when he convinced you to join this team.” 

Dean laughed until he saw Sam was being serious, and then he quickly looked over his shoulder towards her door to make sure she wasn’t there before he said, “Rogue . . . I’m supposed to help with Rogue. He didn’t say anything about stepping in anywhere else.”

“Why not? Would it be so bad?”

“Yes, it would be bad. You think you can just stick someone with same face in front of her, and she won’t know the difference? Hell her daughter knows the difference. No, I’m not touching that, and she just lost him 2 days ago . . . What kind of a creepy dickhead would I have to be to jump in there now that her guy is gone, if he even is gone?”

That was a good point. Exactly the kind of point Sam had meant. “You mean, like say, a creepy demon might?” Dean laughed, and then Sam added, “Or a totally unstable you might?” 

Quickly glancing towards the other door to make sure nobody had heard Sam say that, Dean said, “They wouldn’t. If I know I’m bad for her, then the unstable me definitely does, and the Demon me is totally wrapped up in himself. No, I’m not doing it. She’s off limits.”

Leaning back to sit on the desk, Sam said, “Is this because of what happened to her Sam, cause I’m not that guy. I’m telling you, I think it’d be a good thing for her . . . and you.” 

Dean looked like he was about 2 seconds away from bolting for the door, but instead decided to mock Sam as a final warning. “I think you’re the creepy dickhead trying to push grieving widows onto people. You start picking up chicks at funerals and not tell me about it?”

Deciding to ignore it for now, Sam started pulling the food out of the bags he’d brought and asked if Dean had found anything. 

“Not yet. If the Sam and Dean Winchester from this universe are on a hunt, I’m not seeing it. I think they’re at their base.” 

Because of the year, they were looking for another Dean with the Mark of Cain, but sometime after being cured of being a demon. The Deans had all been on their way to the bunker yesterday when they’d had to come back. In fairness, the Deans should’ve thought something was going on when he and the evil Sam decided to stay behind to help Beth research possible cases the Sam and Dean in this universe might be working if they weren’t at their bunker. 

They all felt like the clock was ticking on this universe if Dean had already been cured, but unless he was up to something like trying to cure one of his brothers of being a demon, there’s no way Sam would ever let his brothers meet up with a new Sam and unkillable Dean without him. And he’d thought he and the evil Sam had at least that much in common, but he’d obviously been wrong. Instead, the evil Sam went and tortured one of their brothers and planned on killing the rest. How the evil Sam could do something like that to anyone who was his brother, Sam didn’t know. He couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Never. Not even if they were a demon. All he’d wanted to do was help the Dean inside the demon, not torture him or hurt him in any way that went beyond just doing the cure.

A few hours later, Sam’s demon brother and other brother who was looking a lot better these days came back. It looked like they had some news. “We were talking with Cas, and we think we know what’s going down here if it hasn’t already happened. Check out this news report that popped up the day we got here.” 

Sam took the other Dean’s iPad and had a look. It didn’t ring any bells. “Didn’t catch that one, huh, Boy Scout?” 

For some reason Demon Dean had decided to start calling Sam’s brother Boy Scout, and it annoyed his brother, but not as much as any of the other names other people had given him on this mission. His brother shrugged and said it was a big country, so he might’ve missed it, and Sam asked, “Why does Cas think this is important?” 

Demon Dean grinned and said, “Cause the reason that prisoner went missing is Cain killed him and then got rid of the body in some mass grave he’s digging for all of his descendants, and our Mark of Cain Dean in this timeline is going to kill him. We need to stop that from happening.” Okay, so it looked like they were going to West Virginia.


	56. Total Confusion

Well, this is a nightmare. I watched 2 Deans stumble down the stairs out of the private jet God conjured up for us to use. He must’ve thought it’d be the funniest way for us to get here. The Deans were laughing and talking complete rubbish and hugging each other the whole way down the steps. How the hell were we supposed to do anything about Cain with them like this? I glanced at Sam, and he looked annoyed. Then I looked at Demon Dean and said, “You did this on purpose. What’s your plan? I’m guessing it’s not one you want them to stop you from doing. Why not just put nitrous oxide in the vents and knock us all stupid?” 

He grinned a cheshire grin and said, “I dosed one of their drinks with molly. Figured he needed a pick me up, since he’s down another Sam. He’s the one who wanted to share.” 

_Right. For purely altruistic reasons, I’m sure. Ugh. Demons._ “Seriously, what are you planning?” 

Looking back at the other Deans, he said, “Looks like they’re going to need a babysitter. Sam, you’re with me.” 

_Uh, no. Fuck that._ “I should make you babysit them.”

“But you can’t. Why is that again?”

Begrudgingly, I admitted, “If there are problems with Cain, you’re the only one strong enough to do anything about him, but for the record, this is absolute bullshit, and Sam is babysitting. I’m not letting you go off anywhere with Cain on your own . . . You Mark of Cain people get an idea in your head, like ‘I’m tainted, so I need to wipe out all my descendants,’ or ‘I’m going to kill every last Styne,’ and you fly with it. Come on. Let’s go.”

I picked up my bags and started walking away from them. I ignored Sam saying I couldn’t be serious and that this wasn’t fair. I didn’t care if it was fair. I wasn’t babysitting them. I didn’t think that was fair. “Then you shouldn’t have let them get high!” Yeah, Sam didn’t like that, but I didn’t particularly care. 

“That was perfect.” 

“What was perfect?” 

“You acting all pissed off at me. Keep that up, and nobody will suspect we’re fucking.” 

“We’re not fucking.” 

“Not yet, but we will.” 

“No we won’t.” He’d spent most of that plane ride trying to convince me to join the mile high club with him and then disappeared as fast as he appeared about 30 seconds before one of the other Deans showed up. “Stop trying to distract me. Who are you planning to kill? The Dean or Sam in this universe? I’m thinking every last Sam after what happened yesterday.” 

“Do you see any other way out of this? We let the Dean from this universe do his job and take out Cain. That will save millions people, and then we’ll just take Sam out so the Mark stays on Dean. That saves everybody.” 

“Talking –“

“Can’t talk to Sam when he gets something in his head . . . thought you learned that when he started looking for those prophecies in your universe. The Sam here is on a mission to save his brother. Nothing can turn that around now.” 

“We could kill Rowena, Crowley’s Mom. She’s a powerful witch, and she’s the one Sam gets to do the spell. We can track down the Book of the Damned and make sure Charlie doesn’t find it. We could take Sam’s options away, so he can’t fix his brother. There are more plays here than just killing him.” 

Dean actually took that into consideration. “I would be up for killing Crowley’s Mom . . . She’s actually, like his Mom?” 

“Yeah, she’s hundreds of years old, runs around calling him Fergus, and he has massive Mommy issues.” 

“Can we kill her, make Crowley watch, and then kill Crowley too?” 

Yeah, I didn’t see why not. They were both supposed to be a part of the team that got the Mark off Dean. “Whatever makes you happy, Dean, but we’re talking to the Sam and Dean in this universe first, or maybe even trying to find a way to do something about Cain that doesn’t involve killing him. We could –“ 

“I don’t think we have time to find a way to lock him up forever, and I know there’s no way you could trap him with one of those devil’s trap bullets. He’s too fast, and you’re not going anywhere near him. If it comes to it, then leave him to me.” 

_No way was I –_

“I will knock your ass out and stuff you somewhere you won’t be able to break out of in time . . . You’re not going near him.” 

_I’m pretty good at breaking out of places, and if I can’t get out of something, I could always ask Chuck for a hand if –_

“You’re just thinking that to annoy me now, aren’t you?” I smiled, and ignored what he said next. About 30 seconds later, he asked, “You think we might run into them in the prison?” 

It’d be close. If they found out a few hours after we got here . . . Let’s say it was the next morning, because we got here in the middle of the night. They would’ve spent that day researching it and maybe setting up meetings with the warden. It’d take about 10-12 hours to drive here, which covers yesterday. They wouldn’t go straight to the prison. They’d probably crash for the night. It all depended on when the warden said he’d see them. If their cover was to investigate the disappearance in an official capacity, he’d want time to get the prison in order, but he wouldn’t want to take too much time, because he wouldn’t want to seem like he was hiding anything . . . today, sometime? 

I slept most of the morning. It took a couple of hours to fly here. It would take about 5 minutes to find a car and steal it from the airport. Then there was driving time to the prison. It depended on if their meeting was in the morning or afternoon. 

“I think they’d proably –“ 

“I know what you think . . . If it was an afternoon meeting, we might. If we don’t run into them at the prison, then we’ll check the shittiest motels in town to see if they’re still in town. If they’re not, then we’re heading to Ohio. You want to get out in front of them instead of chasing them back to Kansas . . . Put us in suits, and I’ll get us there faster, so we stop wasting time.” 

He was always listening in on everyone’s thoughts just like my Dad. In fact, at one point I’d wondered if he’d let Sam take him, but I didn’t think so now. Sam was good at hiding what he was thinking around supernatural entities. Plus, the ambush happened as soon as Dean got to the room, and Dean was cocky and thought nothing could touch him. 

_Chuck, uh, I hate suits, but I guess we need them if we’re going to confirm this is Cain and –_

I looked down and shook my head. I hated this suit. The best thing about the Apocalypse was not wearing it anymore, and oh look, he fixed where Jo shot me, and everything. A second later, I found myself standing inside the prison. _Show off._

“You’re just jealous.” 

“Thought you wrapped everything up, Inspector.” 

Dean and I turned to see . . . the warden, I guess? To explain why he was still here Demon Dean said his partner had been called away on an emergency. Apparently, I was a Junior Inspector that he and his partner usually left in the car, but since his partner needed the car for his emergency, he’d left me behind. He could’ve come up with worse, I guess. Dean didn’t kill anyone, and I didn’t get carted of to jail, so it worked. 

_After we left the prison, we started looking in every rundown motel in town. Finding the right one almost immediately didn’t help. We’d just missed them there too, and I was starting to think that Demon Dean had insisted on showing me all the things I’d missed the ‘first time’ he saw it with his partner on purpose, so we would miss them on purpose._

“Maybe I did, so what? We’re just going to catch up with them in Ohio, right?” 

“It was a waste of our time.” 

“Doesn’t have to be.” I sighed when I found myself standing in one of the empty rundown rooms. 

“Will you stop?” 

Backing me up towards the nearest wall, he said, “There’s not a part of you that wants to know if your Dean is part of me now?” 

It was really freaking hard to know. If my Dean was in there right now as part of Demon Dean’s soul, and their life histories had been merged into one, then it meant he remembered our lives together and also felt like he’d lived Demon Dean’s life . . . kind of the way our do-over lives were merged with our real lives. We were those people and not those people at the same time . . . It also meant he was a demon right now, and I didn’t entirely know why I wasn’t feeling any of those effects if he was in there, because I thought I should if I could feel him turn into a freaking vampire . . . unless this was an internal change cause by an internal source. His soul was still in his body, so maybe, but even still, you’d think the Mark would be considered an external source . . . I guess the Mark was on his arm and part of him. The other problem was that Demon Dean had also gone memory surfing through my dreams, so he knew my whole life and could talk to me about my life, as if he were my Dean even if he really wasn’t. If he was my Dean, he may never know he was my Dean, because he wouldn’t know if those memories he had were from the dream surfing or his real life . . . or he wouldn’t until we ran into my Dean somewhere. 

“Think I’ll wait until I know for sure where he is.” 

“Then why didn’t you tell the Dean that interrupted us what you were doing before he found you on the plane?” 

“What? You mean turning you down?” 

“Yeah, why lie and say you were researching . . . You’re already lining it up to keep our thing a secret, so they can’t tell your Dean when he comes back . . . If he’s even out there anymore.” 

“That’s wishful thinking on your part. I have no interest in –“ 

“You don’t? There isn’t a part of you that wants to take out on me how losing him is making you feel?” 

“Why are you chasing this?” 

“I know what you need. I knew it as soon as I started flipping through your memories. You’ve spent your whole life in prison, and I’m not just talking about the angels . . . You’ve been in prison since you got out of Heaven. What’s right? What’s wrong? What does he want? It’s never about what you want. That’s the way I used to be, but now that I’m not, I’m free. I wanna do the same thing for you.” 

“I’m not a prisoner.” 

“You know how I know that’s not true? We could be doing this mission for years, and you’ll wait and wait and wait and then when you find out he’s gone . . . either left behind or part of me, you’ll self-destruct . . . You live for him. You always have. Even before you met him, you lived for him, and look at how many times you were tortured for it. You don’t live for you. And I guarantee when he comes back, if he comes back, things will be good for a while, and then he’ll leave, and you’ll wait and wait and wait until he comes back. You’re pathetic.” 

“Thanks?” 

“I want to make you not pathetic, cause everything else about you isn’t.” 

I went to go around him, and he said, “What if I am him now?” I stopped, and he added, “I could be. You’re right. I don’t know . . . have no idea if what I know about you is from flipping through your head or from knowing you. You could be turning him down and show up to find he’s not at the end of this.” 

I stepped back and said, “Are you just saying that, or –“ 

Shaking his head, he said, “No . . . Was thinking you might be able to help me figure it out.” 

“How?” 

“You know how.” 

“I’m not sleeping with you.” 

“Kiss me.” 

“What? No, I’m –“ 

“See, that right there tells me, you know, and you don’t want to confirm it. I kissed you the first night we met, and you thought it felt different. Maybe it’ll feel different than that night, and you’ll know I’m him and me . . . and it basically means he’s gone, right?” 

I shook my head. It didn’t mean he was gone. It just meant he was hidden under all the demon, right? He’d be himself if he was – 

“It’s not that simple, or you would’ve cured me already. That’s why you really don’t want me cured anymore than I want me cured. If I come out of this feeling like the old me instead of your guy, then it’ll mean he’s gone, but right now you can blame it on me being a demon . . . if he’s really part of me now, which we won’t know until you kiss me.” 

“What if I can’t tell?” 

“We take it further and see what happens.” 

I sighed in frustration and said, “I’m not fucking –“ 

“You are if you want to find out.” 

“After you spent all summer screwing triplets with Crowley? There’s no way –“ 

“I’m a special demon, remember. If you shoot me, the bullet hole doesn’t stay there the way it does for demons . . . I heal from anything, and it’s not like I can get sick.” 

“No, you’re just a petri dish spreading things around.” 

“You’ll just have to trust that I’m clean.” 

“Trust? You’re a demon, and you’re manipulating me like one.” 

His eyes flashed black for a few seconds, and then he said, “Yeah, but I’m a demon who told you I wouldn’t hurt you unless we’re sparring, and I meant it. STDs are included in that . . . and I’ll sweeten the deal.” I waited for it, and he said, “As long as we’re doing this . . . unless I have to protect myself from someone else with the Mark, I won’t kill unless you tell me to . . . it’s only fair if I have control over sex.” 

“You’re not –“ 

“I’m dead serious.” 

“Control over sex, so –“ 

“Like I told you when we met.” 

_What like he wants to be my dom?_

"That's exactly what I mean."

"Seems like a bad idea to be a demon's sub."

"No pain. I know you don't like it . . . Thought we already went over this." I hadn't thought he was being serious. "Well, I was. I'll go easy on you the first time." 

_Uhh_ “But I’m just supposed to be kissing you to find out if you’re him, and then you said we could take it further if I still didn’t know, and now you’re saying this is going to be an ongoing thing, but you’ll give me control over when you kill if –“ 

He leaned down to look me in the eye. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” 

“Why?” 

“Cause I know what I want.” 

I wasn’t going to be fooled by him, but I did wonder if he had a point about me being able to feel my Dean in there somewhere, so I leaned forward and gently landed my lips over his. He flinched a little from the slight charge that happened when our lips met. That didn’t happen with my Dean, and it hadn’t happened the last time with Demon Dean, or if it did, he’d connected so fast neither of us had noticed it. 

The kiss itself was slow at first and gradually increased in intensity, which I hadn’t been expecting. I’d thought maybe he might be rough from the start the way he had been the last time, but he wasn’t. His arms slid around me as he pulled me away from the wall to hold me close to him, and again it surprised me, because for all his forbidden this and fucking that there was something tender about it, or there was until I bit his bottom lip kinda hard, and then he growled and slammed us both into the wall. This was my Dean, or part of him, wasn’t it? Or would Demon Dean have always been this way? 


	57. Desperate Times

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is sexual content in this one. It's marked at the start and end in bold.

If killing was his drug of choice, then screwing her was a close second. He was thinking that the guy who invented the vibrating cock ring must’ve had a soul mate, cause wearing one of those was the closest he’d ever come to feeling anything like that. The guy must’ve known he’d make a fortune if he could replicate for other men what it felt like every time he got laid. It’d been a hell of a lot better than the sex he’d had with any of the women he’d fucked in the last month and a half. Helped that she knew he was a demon, and he didn’t have to hide it or pretend he was something he wasn’t.

Before she’d even found all of her clothes, Dean was already planning when they could do this again. She still wasn’t sure he was her guy . . . She was more sure than she had been, but she wasn’t 100%. He didn’t know either, but he couldn’t care less. The only thing he cared about was her not getting murdered by her guy if her guy was still out there somewhere and found out about them. He couldn’t do this anymore if that happened. Maybe he was that guy, but he was a demon and the path he’d taken to being a demon felt so much stronger than anything else, and that’s why he was in control? Same was probably true of the Mark. Maybe underneath the demon and the Mark, he was her guy. He didn’t know. 

What he did know was he had to keep this secret until he figured it out, but he had to find better ways of doing it. He couldn’t keep drugging the other Deans, or they’d get suspicious, and Sam definitely would. He’d have to find another way to keep it quiet, but something on the more extreme side had been necessary for this first time, because he knew it’d take some time to get her to agree to it, and everyone else kept close tabs on her. And it’d had to be today. He wasn’t going to wait any longer than today after last night. 

Couldn’t get her ice blue eyes out of his head after what she did for him, and now he didn’t think he’d be able to get her dark blue ones out of it either. She may not have any control over it, but her irises changed color almost as fast as his eyes went black. He was pretty sure he knew why. She had more angel in her than anyone wanted to admit. Her eyes didn’t glow, so it wasn’t much, but he was thinking that when they cut half her soul out, some kind of energy from her grace melded with her soul, and if she had any grace at all, that meant she was part angel. They were perfect opposites on the outside and similar on the inside. 

When he first saw her, she’d looked pretty and bloody and was talking about seals. Then he’d looked at her traveling companions and saw a bunch of guys who looked like him and a couple of Sams. He knew they weren’t anything other than humans, and since he was curious, he’d decided to let them live until he could figure out what they were doing there. Then his attention got drawn back to her when she tried to walk away. All she’d wanted was to get away from the rest of them for a little while, but they wouldn’t let her. 

They’d said and done anything they had to say and do to reel her back in and make her tow the company line. They were her prison guards, and he wondered how many times over the years she’d tried to break away from them only to be pulled back in. He’d wanted to see what happened next with her, so he followed them. When he saw the guys she was staying with go out to the bar, he’d waited until after she went to bed to go into her room. 

She hadn’t warded it or even put salt down . . . Thought maybe she could sense that he was around and that maybe she wanted him to come in . . . saw the kid was in there with her and changed his mind on that to maybe she’d been just too messed up to do the wards . . . He’d wanted to know why . . . That’s why he’d gone into her memories, and maybe having another her’s brains splattered all over her face without warning might’ve been enough to do that. Then he’d wanted to get a general idea of what kind of a hunter she was and maybe to know what she was doing there and why she was with the guys she was with. 

He’d been right about her being a prisoner, but it was worse than he’d thought it’d be with all the Heaven stuff that he hadn’t expected at all. What he also wasn’t expecting to find was that she killed demons, angels, monsters, and humans alike. She wasn’t just a hunter. She’d fought wars in Heaven, on Earth, and in Hell. She was bloody and violent, and it didn’t take over every part of her the way it did him. She didn’t fight it. She used it, and maybe he’d thought she was someone he could . . . maybe find a partner in . . . but then she was pretty, and maybe there could be more . . . Except she was a prisoner to the dickheads she was with . . . It’d pissed him off, so when he was done with her life story and was flipping back and forth to compare how she’d been the first time she saw Alistair to the last time she saw Alistair, he was raging without knowing it. He’d just happened to be on the most recent memory of Alistair when she finally picked up that she might be in danger and woke up. He hadn’t wanted her to see him until he could get the black eyes back under control, so he’d told her to leave the lights off, but it hadn’t mattered, because she knew what he was as soon as she walked out the door. The thing that’d struck him about that was that she hadn’t cared what he was.

Actually, he didn’t really know what he was, and if he wasn’t busy drinking and screwing and fighting and killing, basically having fun, he thought about it, and he didn’t want to think about it. He knew he was a Knight of Hell, but he also knew he didn’t really feel like he was all-demon, just like she didn’t really feel like she was all-human. That was something else he was going to get her to feel free about. She was what she was. Didn’t have to feel bad about it . . . or the sex they just had. 

Right now she didn’t feel too guilty about it, because she was still pretty sure he was her Dean, but he bet she’d change her mind on that as soon as they got back. All that meant was that the next time they had sex, he’d have to do more things her Dean would do, because maybe he was that Dean, so it should be in there somewhere. He hadn’t had to look for him at all throughout any of what they’d just done, and she’d thought he’d felt like her Dean, so maybe he was. 

Plus, keeping it secret and pushing how close he could get her to do things with him around the others without the others knowing would make the thrill better for her. Him being a demon wasn’t as much of a thrill-seeking thing for her as he’d thought it might be, but then it wasn’t non-existent either. It was more like he was an unknown she couldn’t trust and was trusting anyway, so there was a little danger there, but she wasn’t really scared of him . . . like at all.

He went to go pick something up while she got food for everyone, and by the time they were almost back to the motel the others had gone to after they left, his plans for round two were already made. On their way up to the door, he used his powers to dump the drinks she was carrying for the others all over her. The look she gave him was priceless, and then she pissed him off by throwing what was left of the drinks back at him before she stormed in through the door and threw the bags of food on the table on her way to the shower. Perfect. 

Sam asked him questions about what they found, so Dean told him that the Sam and Dean from this universe had already been to the prison. Then he told Sam that they’d checked all the motels in town and the Sam and Dean from this universe weren’t in town in anymore, which meant they were gonna have to go to Ohio to stop them before they could go up against Cain. Looking at the other Deans, he added, “They need more water than that.” 

Sam threw him a whiney bitch face and said, “Then you go get it, since you’re the one who did this. It should’ve been you babysitting them all afternoon. Funny how you come back when they’re just starting to come down, or at least the first one is.” 

Even more perfect. These people were so easy to play. Heading for the door, Dean said he’d be back with water. “And you can babysit them tomorrow too, because they’re gonna need a baby brother’s shoulder to cry on.” Sam rolled his eyes, but loved the idea of having 3 brothers now, so he wasn’t as pissed as he seemed to be. 

As soon as Dean closed the door behind him, he teleported into the bathroom as Beth was about to get into the shower. She looked annoyed when she saw him. “What are you doing?” 

Holding the present he stole behind his back, so she couldn’t see it, he answered, “I got something for you.” 

Her eyebrows arched in response. “And you couldn’t wait to give it to me until after I was out of the shower?” 

He grinned and shook his head before he started taking his clothes off and told her to get into the shower. She did it, and then he followed her in a minute later. He wasn’t going to fuck her right now. This was a teaser for tonight, so all he did was pay attention to detail while he washed her from head to toe. Better to do this here than in the other motel where they’d been. There hadn’t been time there, and it would’ve looked weird for her to come back with wet hair. And he knew the drinks had annoyed her, but it gave her the perfect excuse to have to shower as soon as she came in the door. 

When he got her out of the shower, he told her to get on her knees. She looked past him towards the door, so he said, “1 week no sparring,” and she went back to looking at him. 

“We didn’t agree –“

“So, we didn’t just take a shower together?”

“No, we did, but –“

“What’s the problem?”

She slumped a little and said, “I think . . . I think you’re –“

“Two in one?”

She nodded, and then said, “But they won’t understand. This won’t go down well –“

“Fuck ‘em. I don’t want them to know anyway. You’re right. It won’t go down well. Won’t go down well with Sam who is already trying to get his brother to move in and take your Dean’s spot, and –“

“He can’t be replaced. Did he really –“

Dean slowly nodded, and she threw an annoyed expression towards the door. “So, he’ll get pissed off on his brother’s behalf, and that’ll start the problems you didn’t want to happen?” He hadn’t thought about that. Maybe she was right . . . even more reason for them not to know.

“So, use it. Get off on knowing they’re just on the other side of the door.”

She laughed and said, “That’s not why you don’t want them to know. Why else don’t you want them to know?”

“Cause if your Dean isn’t with me, then you just cheated on him . . . they’ll tell him, and –“

“You still don’t know if he’s in there or not?”

He shook his head, and she went from being mostly okay with this to not okay with it at all. “But I was thinking I’m a demon, so the life that lead me here is the one I’m going to remember the most, right?” She gave him a hesitant nod, so he added, “And since the Mark is what makes me so strong and turned me into a demon, it probably goes for that too . . . in case you’re thinking about curing me.” 

She looked at his arm and then up at him. “You just said that to make me feel better, and last night you made it seem like the only two options were that he was home or with you . . . no in between, like he got left behind or disappeared. Are you giving me hope for me or so you can benefit from it?”

“Honestly? Both . . . Don’t want you to start crying all over the place, and I like making you feel good . . . almost as much as I like making myself feel good.”

“Why are you so honest with me?”

“What do I have to lie about? You already know what I am.”

“Yeah, I know, but that means I shouldn’t trust you.”

“Exactly, you shouldn’t trust me, but if I lied, we’d have problems, and that’s more hassle than I want. The sex is worth it, but it’d be better if I didn’t have to get it that way . . . Are we gonna do this or what? I want to give you your present, but I can’t –“

**She got** down on her knees, and he thought all crap he just said must really work, so he smiled and then told her what he wanted her to do . . . “And just remember. Maybe he’s watching. Maybe he’s not.” Her eyes darted back up to his, and he shrugged. He really just wanted to make this a little more exciting for her, something forbidden. She never really got that. If him being a demon wouldn’t do it, then this being a secret affair, but maybe not really an affair might be enough. And yeah . . . those are the kinds of thoughts he wanted her to be having . . . that jolt of euphoria she got from being bad for him . . . it turned him on almost as much as it turned her on, and that was before she really got going. 

As soon as she finished licking him clean, he picked her up under the arms, set her on the toilet, so he could lean her back and spread her legs. She was really wet. Looking up to her eyes, he almost thought about foregoing his plans to wait until tonight. No, he was gonna do this right. 

Leaving his fingers to play with her, he reached behind him with his other hand to grab the present. Her head was back. Her eyes were already closed, and she was doing everything she could not to moan one of those amazing moans she had when he turned back. He watched her for a minute, and really had to force himself to stop, so he could get rid of the packaging. “Keep your eyes closed.” Waiting a second to see if she would, he then broke it open and said, “Okay, open them.” 

When she did, she looked from the silent vibrating egg to him. He grinned at the unsure smile she gave him. “Put this in.” She did, and then he showed her the wireless remote and hit the button. You couldn’t hear it vibrating, but she gasped at the setting, so he grinned again before he hit the button to turn it off. “It stays in until I take it out tonight . . . I promise you that we’ll never use it when you’re on a hunt, one of your missions in your world, when we spar, or when you’re training with your weapons . . . and never when your daughter’s around . . . any other time I feel like it is not up for debate.” 

**He was** making her a lot of promises that he seemed to want to keep without really knowing why, and he threw the daughter thing in there, because he figured it was something that might be important to her even though he didn’t particularly care about kids. She nodded to let him know she agreed to that, and he smiled again before he leaned forward to give her a slow lingering kiss without really knowing why he felt like doing that instead of just telling her to get dressed and leaving to go find some water to complete his cover story, or why he was doing it without really wanting to turn her on.

\----------------------

“Are you feeling okay?” 

Looking at Sam, Beth nodded. “Yeah, I just don’t think I’m going to tap into my soul for that long again.” 

_Nice cover._ Yeah, she was still a lot dimmer than she’d been before last night, but that’s not why she’d started breaking out into a cold sweat. Dean had been hitting her with the vibrator every so often all evening, and he turned it on about 15 minutes ago and had left it on. 

“Maybe you should go to bed.” 

Beth looked over at the Boy Scout Dean and said, “But what about –“ 

“We’ve got time. I mean they have to drive from here back to Kansas, do whatever it is they have to do there, and then drive back to Ohio. We can stay around here tomorrow to plan, and then go the day after.” 

Yeah, the other Deans weren’t going to be up for doing much of anything tomorrow. Probably wouldn’t sleep tonight either. Cas had Rogue, so Beth could sleep in tomorrow. Gabriel had done his disappearing routine, because they didn’t need him right now. They should be in the clear.

As soon as she went to bed, Dean turned the vibrator off, waited about 20 minutes, and then flipped it back on for 10 minutes before he told the others he was going out for more whiskey. Luckily, none of the rest of them felt like going with him. When he popped into her room, she on the bed, and that was a sight he could get used to seeing.

When he crawled over her, she panted out, “This isn’t right.”

“Why not? Thought things were fine earlier, and you’ve still got the damn egg in. If - ”

“They were, but I decided I’m not good for them or you . . . The –“

“Who said they cared?”

He’d meant he hadn’t said he cared about her, because he didn’t, but she said, “The solo-Dean . . . He cares too much. I can feel it. And my Dean . . . if I’m not sure . . . it’s not fair to him or you . . . and yes, you do care too much if you’re really doing this to free me from prison . . . and I’m not someone you should care about . . . my drug of choice you were talking about . . . the big challenges that make me feel alive . . . I make things 10x worse than they need to be just to get those highs . . . never used to . . . it’s just –“ 

He leaned down and kissed her. There was too much talking. Cared too much? He didn’t care too – 

“Yeah, you do, and I’ll bring you down with me.” He stopped and looked down at her. Didn’t think she could read minds, or she didn’t know how to make herself do it. Why was she doing it now? “I’m not . . . I just know what you’re feeling.” Was she seriously giving him a ‘fuck off’ speech? 

“Care about you? I don’t care about you. Fucking and fighting. That’s all this is. Was. I’m done, skank.” He dropped the remote on the bed and told her to finish herself off before he disappeared and went to go find a demon or two to kill and that whiskey.


	58. Hope for the Future

“So, she’s gone? What’s the big deal? She’ll come back. She always comes back to you losers. Not sure why we’re packing up and heading out in searching for her.” 

It didn’t look like she was coming back. She hadn’t been here this morning, and if she went out to train, then she would’ve been back hours ago. Sam wanted to know why she was gone. Was it because of what happened with the other Sam? Or had she finally lost it after what happened with her Dean?

“There’s no note.” Sam didn’t know what Cas meant by that, but he was guessing it meant she wasn’t coming back? 

Demon Dean really seemed adversed to leaving. He kept complaining about it. “You got that right, Sammy. This is a waste of time. We don’t even know where she went. She could be in town shopping for all we know.” 

It was still weird having two all-powerful beings around who could read your mind and liked to let you know it. At least Sam’s Cas never used to do that. Sam’s Dean checked his weapons bag and responded to Demon Dean. “Nah, she’s not the kind of woman who goes shopping unless it’s for weapons. She probably wanted to get a jump on going to Ohio, so she could do something reckless without us.” 

“Could be going after Rowena or Crowley or the Book of the Damned.” They all looked at Demon Dean, and he shrugged. “Might’ve mentioned something about them yesterday.” 

That bit of information made her Cas sit down next to his bags and reassess the situation. “I know the Book of the Damned can’t be destroyed, but if she can get it and bring it with us, then we should be able to leave this universe . . . unless there’s another way to get the mark off that we don’t know about. If merely finding the book doesn’t take us to another universe, then she’ll have to find somewhere else to hide it and be mindful of the Frankenstein family . . . I do not remember where she where she said the book was, or if she even knew.” 

Sam had no idea what he was talking about. A quick look at his brother said he didn’t either. Demon Dean rolled his eyes. “Burnt down monastery in Spain . . . doesn’t matter. If she gets the book, and that works, then we’ll see her again when we show up in the next universe. If she gets it, and it doesn’t work, then she’ll probably hide it so Charlie and the Stynes can’t find it, and she knows the only way to kill any Stynes that show up is to shoot them in the head. She’ll be fine. Let her go do her own thing.” They gave each other looks before looking at Demon Dean again, so he pointed to his head and added, “Dream surfing . . . gives you a lot . . . You guys are boring me. I’m going to go find a bar that’s open,” before he disappeared. 

“So where are we going? Ohio or Spain or wherever the hell Crowley and this Rowena are?” 

Looking at his brother, Sam answered, “Well, there are 5 of us left on the team right now if you include Gabriel. Why does it have to be either/or? You and the other Dean take Gabriel to Ohio, so you can talk to the Sam and Dean from this universe. Cas and I will go to Spain. If she’s not there, then we can get the book, and if these Stynes show up, then we know how to kill them, but I don’t think it’ll come to that. If Cain hasn’t found another way to get the Mark off in all this time, then this is probably the only way to do it.” When his brother looked like he’d rather go with him, Sam added, “Unless you want to be on a plane for at least like 10 or 12 hours.” 

“Ohio’s fine.” That’s what he’d thought.

\------------------

Sam wondered if Cas knew how to do this. They had some time to kill on the long flight, and who knew how long they’d be jumping around from universe to universe? “You probably don’t really have to do much research in your timeline. I mean there aren’t any computers, so you probably just go out to try and find people and deal with any monsters you come across, right?” 

Cas pulled his attention away from the window and said, “You never got a chance to see the bunker in your universe, but there’s a supernatural computer there from the 1950s that has red lights that flip on when there are significant supernatural events in those regions. I updated ours. Now it can track any supernatural being in the country, and if you click on the dot, it can tell you what it is, unless it’s a hybrid. They flicker briefly every few minutes, so unless you’re watching the screen all the time, you don’t notice them. There was no way to know how many hybrid combinations were out there, so I could only program it to look for monsters I knew existed, even those I thought were extinct in case they were not actually extinct. Any that we don’t know how to kill, like ogres, we research in the Men of Letters archives.” 

That was phenomenal. “Are you serious?” Cas nodded. “Wow, so the reason there are so many monsters now is –“ 

“Well, Sam and Crowley created a lot of them, and Eve and her generals created even more. We put people in charge of the computer that we thought we could trust. It turns out that we could not and the monster population exploded. Bobby is in charge of the computer now, so that won’t happen again.” 

At the mention of Bobby, Sam felt a twinge of sadness. Losing that man had been like losing a second father. He’d started losing his brother when Bobby died too, and then seeing what Bobby became after he died and having to lose him again had been harder. Well, at least Bobby ended up somewhere like Death’s lock up, or Sam assumed he did. He smiled briefly to himself thinking about Bobby sitting somewhere drinking his favorite liquor and reading his favorite book.

“What’s your Bobby like? I mean is the same as ours was?” 

Cas relaxed back into the plane seat a little while he thought about it. “He was until he sanctioned the hit on Adam, me, Beth, and Dean, because he missed Dean and Beth. After that happened, we left the Wisconsin camp, and he realized what he had done. He felt true remorse and returned to being himself. Beth invited him for Christmas, and it was like he had never been away. He and Rufus still bicker and –“ 

Sam quickly sat up and said, “Rufus is still alive there?” 

“He tends to hunt on his own, but he is Dean’s greatest supporter. Dean thinks of him as a wealth of knowledge and says he’d rather have him than 10 hunters because of his experience.” Sam was just now realizing that there might be a lot of people he and Dean would have a chance to see again. He’d known about Bobby, but he wasn’t sure he knew about Rufus. 

“Who else is alive in your timeline that we lost?” 

Cas considered his response. “Pamela is still alive. She’s one of our best hunters too. She can sense when there are people nearby who are in need of help, and she has helped mould Stephen into a better, more mature hunter.” 

“Pamela Barnes? How can she hunt?” 

“Beth told our Sam and Dean that I was who raised Dean from Hell, so they never went to her, and never went blind.” 

That was great news. “Who else?” 

Cas said their cousin Gwen was still alive and that she was a good hunter as well. Apparently, she and Beth’s Dean were pretty close, and Sam thought that was great. They’d have family there again. He knew they’d lost Lisa in their universe, but he also knew that his brother was looking forward to seeing Ben. Sam thought maybe his brother thought that he could be a part of Ben’s life there, because that Ben didn’t have anybody and actually needed someone to look out for him, whereas in their universe, Dean thought Ben was better off without him. Sam thought that their Ben losing Lisa was one of the biggest reasons his brother had agreed to do this mission.

Being able to see Bobby, Rufus, Gwen, and Pamela again, and Dean having a chance to look out for Ben in a meaningful way, made Sam think that the other life, while difficult, would almost be like Heaven. “And you guys get to talk to Mom and Dad?” 

“Pamela helped us do that until Chuck sealed the human side of Heaven to protect the souls during the civil war. We didn’t know if they’d also perished in the war until Adam agreed to be Michael’s vessel. Dean thinks that Adam agreed to that, so he could let us know they were alive up there. He also believes that Adam held Michael, so Dean could kill him, like a team effort. We haven’t had a chance to check in with the Dead Hunter’s Society in a while, but we could try when we get back.” 

“And if Chuck’s stopped blocking the human side of Heaven, you can talk to Ellen and Jo . . . everyone up there through Pamela?” Cas nodded. “And if Beth wanted, she knows how to get to Heaven and how to find the human part of Heaven if it’s no longer blocked off?” 

“Gabriel knows the way as well.” So, death in that universe really wasn’t as big of a deal. It was more of a continuation of life. 

“You think maybe one of you guys could take me and Dean up there some time to meet them?” 

“Why?”

“We were thinking of trying to make a deal with Death, so if Dean went to Heaven with Beth, I could come too if we gave him 100 spirits for his lock up . . . but if that doesn’t work, and if Dean doesn’t go with Beth, then I don’t know. I’d kind of like to see Mom and Dad again if we aren’t going to get the chance to do it after we die.” 

“I’ll take you.” That’d be good. Sam couldn’t wait to tell Dean. “And if you want help on the spirits, I could help with that too. Death might be willing to take that deal of 100 or 200 spirits in exchange for 1 or 2 souls, since there are fewer hunters to send spirits onto the afterlife now, and we’re more concerned with monsters . . . He’s the one who makes the final decisions on ‘lost souls.’” Yeah, that’s what Sam had thought, but it made him feel better to hear someone in the know say that.

“You’re computer can track spirits too?” 

“It should, but we’ll have to clear out all the red zones and dots belonging to monsters to find them. Their weaker signals get drowned out by those.” 

“And in theory, we could wipe out all the monsters in your universe with this computer, or at least the ones in North America, right? I mean you guys killed all the vampires in North and South America with the exception of a few, so if we do our jobs, we could actually make it so future generations don’t have to worry about them?” 

Cas’s head bobbed back and forth in a ‘yes and no’ fashion. “Until they can start traveling over from Europe, Africa, and Asia again.” 

Sam asked if the computer could focus on those continents, and Cas said it was set to North America, because that’s where their focus had to be for now, but when they were done with that . . . “Gabriel could do it, or if the human side of Heaven is open again, he might make me get my grace back and do it myself.” 

With that computer, they could actually make that universe a monster-free universe. “Are things there the same as here and our universe? I mean, if there’s a place here that’s got spirits, then can we research them here and go to your universe and still find them?” 

Cas said he wasn’t sure, but he knew Beth took the kids being trained as hunters in their camp on a hunt in a hospital that she’d heard was haunted in a different timeline, and that’d worked. He also said that any spirit cases that Sam had done with his brother that Cas’s Dean and Sam hadn’t been able to do because of the Apocalypse might be an option. That meant every spirit case Sam and Dean had cleared since Sam went in the cage was up for grabs. That was great news. 

“Okay, so we’ll research this monastery in Spain and see if we can find the book, and then you can help me research old cases me and Dean did and maybe see if we can find some others, so we can summon Death to make the deal and get started on this straight away when we get there.” 

Cas said he’d do what he could, but he didn’t have a computer, and Sam smiled. “That’s okay. I’ll use mine, and maybe you can take down notes for the monastery, since we don’t have a printer, and then you can start taking down the spirit hunts I remember doing, so we can start making a list. I’m guessing that writing things down is the best way to keep track of them in your universe if the electricity is only in a few places, right?” 

“It is. That’s why we all have notebooks.” Cas took a notebook out of his weapons bag and flipped it open with a pen in hand, and Sam thought this was great. He and Dean had already had a plan, but it’d felt like a pipe dream more than anything, and now they might actually be able to pull it off. Maybe they could even make this work for the pre-mark Dean too, because Sam didn’t want any of his brothers to be left out.


	59. Cain

“Sonofabitch! That’s not funny!” I quickly backed up after literally landing 4 inches behind Cain. He turned to look at me, and yeah, he was the real deal. Watching him on TV doesn’t prepare you for the way it felt to be around him. He was the biggest badass I’d come across. Some respect was in order here . . . more than I’d given to Michael anyway. 

“Hi, Cain . . . uh, sorry about the intrusion of space. God is a practical joker sometimes . . . Uh, you don’t have to say anything . . . but if you could just hear me out . . . I was wondering maybe if you might want to know why you have the Mark . . . I mean what job you’ve been doing since you got it . . . and I don’t mean creating the Knights of Hell or going on a global rampage . . . More like why it drives you mad for the killing, but still makes you a hero . . . more of an anti-hero or no . . . an anti-villain at this point, but I think you know what I mean . . . maybe?” 

He looked at the blood dripping down my hand, and I chose to ignore it for the time being. I ran out of Celox, and it was soaking through what I’d used to pack my shoulder. I’d fix it later. I’d wanted to catch Cain before the Cas from this universe got here. I wasn’t on Cain’s kill list, but if I didn’t come from this universe, then maybe that’d put me on it? I was hoping that whole Michael’s vessels don’t want to kill me thing was true even for Cain though. 

I just wanted to talk to him and see if we could work something out. He was on a mission. I was a gnat really, an annoyance, but he was listening even if he wasn’t saying anything. All I’d asked him for was some time, and I guess he was giving it to me . . . maybe while he tried to figure out what or who I was? I should get this show on the road.

“As lovely as it is, I don’t think this graveyard will be big enough for what you’re planning . . . 1 in 10? You’re going to need a lot more space . . . and, uh, your mission will keep you going for a while, but what happens when you’re finished?” I looked at his Mark and added, “The Mark corrupts you because of what it is locking away . . . God gave it to Lucifer first . . . You’ve met the guy, so you know how that turned out. I mean, I think he always would’ve been resentful of humans, because he was God’s favorite, and then we were, but . . . the Mark didn’t help in the whole going evil department. It turned Lucifer from the Light Bringer, into a Light destroyer. Then he got rid of the Mark and gave it to you. That made you the most important being in the universe until about a year ago when you shared it with someone else.” 

He said, “Dean Winchester,” and I think my heart skipped a beat, because what if I’d just set him loose on the Dean in this timeline before the Dean in this timeline was ready for it. 

“Uh, yeah . . . See, the reason someone with the Mark can’t die unless someone with the Mark kills them is because there always has to be someone who has the Mark. It keeps the lock closed on the cage holding back the Darkness. She’s God sister. If God is the creator, then she is the destroyer . . . the yin to his yang . . . Every time he created something, she’d get jealous, and destroy it . . . He got sick of her kicking over his sandcastles, created the archangels, and locked her away, so he could get started on Creation . . . He couldn’t kill her, because they’re both needed for reality to exist, so locking her away was the only solution . . . I think some of her destroying tendencies rub off on the bearer of the mark . . . Killing is destroying, right?” 

I didn’t wait for him to nod or even acknowledge that he was starting to understand something he’d never understood. “She’s had billions of years to do nothing but get angrier and angrier about being locked away in a cage, and she’s going to want to do what she used to do with all of God’s creations . . . destroy them, make God watch as suns and planets and Earth break apart into nothing, and then she’ll destroy him . . . so, it’d really be better if she weren’t released . . . maybe you’d be okay with it if she got out and did all that, but what about the souls of your brother that you sacrificed everything to save or Colette? They’ll be destroyed right along with all the rest.” 

He looked at his arm and said, “The Mark can’t come off. I’m proof of that.” 

_Oh, you poor, poor demon._ “It can be removed . . . There’s a book of spells called The Book of the Damned. With the right Codex, it can be translated, and then the spell can be performed by the right witch . . . Rowena . . . Crowley’s mother . . . If Dean kills you, Sam Winchester will make sure that Mark comes off his brother and damn the consequences . . . if you kill Dean, then the universe will be saved, but you’ll keep killing, and I know that when you kill, it gives you a buzz, but I’m guessing that right after that subsides, you crash and feel pretty bad about it . . . not because of the morality of it. That burned away along time ago . . . it’s because of a promise you made that you break every time you kill, and the only way to get past that self-loathing is to kill again . . . I think part of you wants that to stop. It’s why if you and Dean meet, you won’t win. If I could help you keep your promise without you dying, would you take my help?” 

Lifting his forearm, he asked, “You could remove this curse from me?” 

Well, it wasn’t necessarily what I wanted, but what I wanted was selfish. “If I don’t want to see any version of Dean suffer in any way, then of course I’m going to hope that you say we should get Gabriel to send you to a planet where you can’t kill, so we can get the Mark off of Dean, but I also know that even with that Mark and even as a demon, Dean’s fundamentally good . . . the same way you are underneath all that corruption from the Mark . . . and maybe you’ve earned it . . . the right to be free . . . so you could go be with your Colette, because, like I said . . . I know you’re good deep down. I have a 6th sense about these kinds of things . . . I’ll leave it up to you to decide what you want to do.” 

“Maybe I was once, but you do not know what this curse has made me. I will not be seeing Colette again.” 

Yeah, he would. “The contract you made has been more than fulfilled. And I’ve seen true evil more than once. True evil can lust, and it can covet, but it cannot love or put that love above the only other thing that makes you feel alive for over 150 years without the person you love being there. If you’re worried about it, stick around as a human and spend the rest of your life working with war survivors or something to help make your light flourish more . . . cause once the Mark’s off, I can cure you being a demon too. You can see her again.” 

“Why would you do this for me?” 

_I guess that’s a fair question._ “I think she was your soul mate. Think of how you felt when she died, and that’s how she feels every second without you even now. She deserves to have happiness for giving you something that I’ve never been able to give Dean.” 

I thought he was going to make his decision, but then he said, “I take it your Dean Winchester’s soul mate?” I nodded, and he said, “He’ll kill you the way I killed her.” 

Cain’s story was more complicated than that. “You didn’t kill her. You helped her die. Abaddon was the one killing her. What you did was give Colette a chance to die feeling safe in your arms, and you gave her the chance to talk to you one last time, so she could say what she really wanted to say to you. She didn’t want you to stop killing because of the lives it would save. She wanted you to stop for the good man she knew was under all the corruption from the Mark . . . She wanted to let you know she saw him, and that what you are isn’t who you are . . . You’re more than that. I wouldn’t have to know what she said to know the jist of what she meant, because in the same situation, it’s the same thing I’d want Dean to know. I know he can beat it, just like she knew you could.” 

He didn’t say anything, so I kept rambling. “So, are you in, or are you going to a different planet? I could take you to see her in Heaven if you want to talk it over with her, or –“ 

He nodded back over his shoulder and said, “I think I’ll let it be his decision, so you can see who he really is. Maybe it’ll save you from her fate.” 

When I looked to where he’d indicated, I saw Dean standing behind him, Demon Dean to be exact. He watched Cain turn to face him and said, “I’m not here to fight unless you keep me from taking a look at her arm. She’s a bit slow on the uptake on some things. Has no idea what her body can handle before she drops dead, but . . . if you want someone to take you to see your wife, so you can talk it over, she can get you there, just not today . . . She knows how to find you. She’ll get back to you in a day or two to see what you decide.” 

Cain looked from Dean to my arm and then disappeared. As soon as he was gone, Dean came stalking up to me. “What did I tell you?” 

That he’d knock me out and stuff me somewhere if I tried to go near Cain? “I just wanted to – “ 

Looking at my arm, he asked, “Who did this?” 

_Not Cain._ “A member of the mob with pitchforks? That or convenience store clerks have just decided to start shooting people who want to buy cake at 3 o’clock in the morning.” 

He looked a little confused while he pulled my shirt collar down to get a better look. “So, you bought cake, and some guy shot you?” 

_Not quite._ “No, I tried to buy cake . . . Asking for cigarettes is what set him off. I didn’t get to pay for either.” 

He put my collar back up, and a second later we were standing in my motel room. He started lifting my bags off of my shoulders and throwing them on the floor, while he said, “You think it’s worse because you’re fucking a demon?” 

Uh, I don’t know what that has to do with anything. “Doubt it. People can sense the Mark on my soul . . . Generally, unless they think I’m a good hunter, they don’t think I deserve it for one reason or another . . . I think he we just anti-me smoking.” Dean started shouting for Gabriel to get his feathery ass to our motel after that, and as soon as my Dad showed up, Dean disappeared again. 

“What’s his problem?” 

I didn’t know. “I got shot by a clerk last night, and I thought maybe I should stay away from the good Sam and Cas until my soul evens out a little more, and since I had some free time, I thought why not give Cain a visit? He didn’t want me around Cain on my own?” 

My Dad shook his head, but kept his mouth shut, before putting his hand over my shoulder to heal it. When he was done, it felt good as new. “So, we’re trying a different approach in this universe?” 

“Yeah, I was thinking that we could either have you or Death send Cain to a different planet, so he doesn’t kill anybody else, and so Dean getting rid of his Mark in this universe wouldn’t do any damage, but then I started feeling bad for Cain and thought he and Colette deserve a happy ending in one of these timelines. I offered to help him get rid of his Mark, cure him of being a demon, enroll him in something like the Peace Corp, and then hide the Book of the Damned, so Charlie and the Stynes never find it. It’d mean that Dean in this timeline can’t be relieved of the Mark, but the Darkness won’t get out, and maybe he’ll find peace on whatever planet Death sends him to when he summons him, if he summons him, because if Charlie can’t find the Book of the Damned, then the Stynes won’t kill her, and Dean won’t go on a rampage to exact revenge on the Stynes . . . Plus not killing Cain with the First Blade might help it take longer for him to lose it, if he ever does?” 

Dad looked around the motel room. “You fill anyone else in on your plans?” I shook my head, so he asked, “You think maybe because you didn’t, they might not know to not mess them up?” I nodded, so he looked at Rogue, who he was holding, and said, “Well, good luck with that one. I think I’m going to take her to the Great Wall now and see what she thinks of that. Then maybe we’ll hit all of the Disneylands and Worlds out there again . . . After that, I don’t know where to take her.” 

Why’d he have to take her anywhere? “If you really think Cain is a problem, and she has to be as far away from him as possible while he’s on a descendants killing spree, you could just let her stay in our old house and give her the normal experience. You don’t have to hide from her that you’re special the way you did with me, so it doesn’t have to be boring for you . . . I mean in this universe it’s winter, so there’s snow you two can play around in if you want . . . make cool ice castles for her or something.” 

Dad grinned and said, “Think I might skip the other stuff and just do that,” before he disappeared. Now I just had to wash the left over blood off and figure out where everybody else went.


	60. Working Out the Kinks

Dean came back with his arms full of cartons of cigarettes he stole off the back of a truck and dumped them on the bed across from Beth’s bed before he tossed a pizza box next to her. Gabriel was gone, and she looked like she’d had a shower before she started researching on her laptop, so she must be fine. She looked at the cigarettes and then she looked back at him for an explanation. “Now you don’t have to worry about buying any cigarettes for a while, and I figured you hadn’t eaten . . . Thought maybe you might get shot if you ordered the wrong thing, so I brought you something back.” 

She smiled when she lifted the lid on the pizza box and saw it was a mushroom pizza. When she looked back up at him, he bent down to kiss her before she could say anything. It wasn’t an apology. It was a peace offering, and if she said thanks, then it’d be like he did it to get thanked, and he hadn’t, so he’d have to think of something else to do to get his point across, and this would’ve been a waste of his time. 

When he pulled back, he touched his forehead to hers and said, “I thought you left, because I called you a skank.” He didn’t know why he’d thought that. It’d made him annoyed with him and her, and he didn’t know why, but it had. 

“No, I just wanted chocolate and cigarettes . . . I don’t really care what you or anyone else calls me . . . I –“ 

He stood up and looked down at her. “North Star. Doesn’t bother you if I call you that, does it?” 

Taking a deep breath, she replied, “Okay, Righteous Man.” 

He wasn’t that fucking guy anymore. She smirked at the look on his face before she got up to go break open one of the cartons, so he said, “At least I’m not ashamed of who I really am.” 

When she turned back to face him, the look on her face was sarcastic. “Right . . . And who is that? Are you some big bad Knight of Hell, or are you Dean Winchester? You don’t think you’re that guy anymore? Well, I very much doubt that. Part of you is, so you are an entirely new breed . . . You’re not even like Cain . . . You -” 

His mouth slammed over hers, so he could make her shut up. After she’d been suitably distracted a couple of minutes later, he pushed her away, because he wasn’t done yet. “You’re not any better than me. You’re a fucking nephilim who keeps parading around like you’re a human when you’re not . . . Where the hell are you going?” 

He teleported in front of the door to keep her from walking out, and she gave him a little glare. “You’re clearly going through something, and I’m not going to let you take it out on me.” 

Pushing her back into the wall, he shouted, “You’ll let me take whatever I want out on you!” 

“No, I won’t. Chuck –“ 

His mouth landed over hers again, and he pulled back a few minutes later to menacingly say, “You do what I say when I say –“ 

“No, I don’t . . . that was only ever a sex thing, never a not sex thing, and that’s over anyway, so –“ 

His mouth connected with her again, but instead of the kiss being angry and intense he felt himself relax into it straight away, and because he’d mellowed, she changed her approach to one that was tender. It calmed him down even more. Now she was thinking that he’d been aggressive because he didn’t want it to be over. Maybe she was right. Maybe that’s why he’d felt off all day. 

Dean pulled back to look down at her. Yeah, maybe that had been it. “I can’t die . . . or it’s really fucking hard for me to die. No matter what games you need to play to get your high . . . You won’t bring me down with you.” 

“But –“ 

“But nothing . . . I already know that if he’s not me, you’re going back to him, and even if he is me or part of me or whatever, I know I won’t have you forever, because you’re going to die, and I won’t . . . and before you think about getting the Mark off of me, or curing me, I don’t wanna change what I am. I’m good with being a demon. I don’t want to feel the way I used to feel all the time . . . The way I used to feel is the reason the guy you’ve been with has only been good for you for like a year out of the 17 or 18 years you’ve known him . . . I won’t leave you for you, because I want you for me. You don’t have to hide what you are from me either. I don’t care if you’re more nephilim than you want to admit. I don’t care if that’s what makes you not feel things the way humans feel them. I can’t feel that way anymore either . . . and I know everything about you. I’m not walking into any surprises. I still want to be your dirty little secret.” 

“Why do you want to be a secret?” 

It was the smart play. “It’s hotter for both of us if I’m fucking you in the next room or fucking you with an egg right in front of them . . . for a whole lot of reasons. If they know about it, that goes away, and it starts getting messy . . . They’ll start giving you a hard time about it. They’ll annoy me by bitching to me about it. It’s just a ‘you and me’ thing. Fuck everybody else. I don’t want guys like Cain, Abaddon, Crowley or anybody else knowing about it in any universe either. It lets them know I have a weakness, so stop telling them . . . Why do you keep reading my mind? I know it’s not you knowing what I’m feeling.” 

She leaned her head back against the wall and said, “You’re unpredictable. If you’re going to do things, like drug another Dean, I want to know why. If I’m going to try and talk you out of our arrangement, I want to know how you’re going to take it. If you’re going to split our team up and send them around the world to keep them away from Cain after you figure out that’s where I am, I want to know that, so I know what I have to do to get ahead of them.” 

“I thought you liked unpredictable.” 

“No, I like to be unpredictable and cheat to win.” The little flash of mischief that flickered across her eyes made him smile. She wanted to turn one upping him into a game, because she thought he’d make it difficult. She hadn’t planned on telling him that so she could get out in the lead, but now that she had, she knew he was going to accept her challenge. 

She was exactly what he’d needed. Before he met her, he’d already gotten bored with his new life and had no idea what to do next. She livened everything up. Didn’t matter whether it was whisking him off to other universes or her taking out someone she’d known for years for him or sex or this game she was suggesting or how he knew it’d be when he finally got to do some sparring with her or went after the big game with her in her universe . . . She was his perfect partner in crime. “We’ve got a couple of hours. You’re not going anywhere.” She went from watching his lips to looking up at him before she gave him a little nod to let him know it was back on.

\-----------------------

She had no energy left after he’d put her through her paces. He knew how they got here, because he’d made it happen, but he didn’t really know how they got here, because he was a demon. She knew what that meant. She knew he was volatile and violent. She knew he wasn’t just any demon. He was a Knight and had the Mark, so he always wanted to kill. She knew he had the First Blade on him, and she knew it was always calling to him. She knew he could plunge it into her anytime he wanted, and yet she let herself be totally vulnerable around him. It was an incredible turn on, a lot more of one than if she did all that stuff and didn’t know what he was.

After he’d untied her and took the blindfold off, he laid on the bed and pulled her up to him, so he could wrap an arm around her. She put her head on his shoulder and flung and arm and a leg over his chest and stomach, and he grinned when he looked at her a few minutes later. She wasn’t going anywhere for a while. He’d gone way past time too, so if she wanted to catch the guys going to Spain, the only way she’d beat them was if she left in the next half hour and went straight to the exact place in that monastery where the book was . . . or she could go to Cain . . . couldn’t do both. 

Dean was thinking that if whichever members of their team that’d gone after the book, got it before she did, they’d all go to another timeline, but if she got it first, Chuck would probably let them stick around, so she could honor her offer with Cain. That meant she had to go after the book if she wanted to help Cain out, and that worked for Dean, because she wasn’t going to Cain again. 

Beth was the perfect target for Cain if Cain wanted to get at him, and Cain had to want that, because with the way Cain was eyeing the First Blade earlier . . . Cain wouldn’t pass up a chance to get it back for anyone or anything. Sure, it’d mean the Dean in this universe would have to keep the Mark, but Beth was already planning on letting that happen anyway, and once the Dean here made the shift back to being a demon again, he wouldn’t suffer anymore . . . might be a little lonely and bloodthirsty, but feeling guilty for anything he did? That’d be a thing of the past. It was the best thing for him. Yeah, Cain had to go. 

Looking back down at her again, Dean trailed his fingers along her shoulder and said, “You did a good job.” 

She breathed out a barely audible laugh, like she didn’t believe that for a second and sounded disappointed as she replied, “3 weeks . . . I keep racking up the time.” 

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be kicking your ass in no time . . . It’s gonna be a lot harder with me than with Cas.” 

“You might be more powerful than Cas when he was an angel, but it’s about skill, not power . . . What are you going to use? Angel blade?” 

He grinned and said, “Nah, I don’t need anything. I’ll take your blade off of you and use that.” She looked annoyed and was going to say something, but he leaned forward to cover her lips with his and smiled when she returned the kiss. Could just forget about Cain or the book.


	61. The Wolf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is more sex in this in a couple of places. It's marked in bold at the start and end if you don't want to read.

No shower. Just barely got my clothes on. Definitely still sweating . . . This was no way to jump timelines. The best thing about it though was that we all showed up at different times . . . 2 minutes ago, and I probably would’ve showed up mid-orgasm though. “Where’d you go?” 

Uh, well. “I went out and thought I’d be back in maybe 10 minutes tops, but then I got shot buying chocolate cake and cigarettes, so I thought I’d lay low until my soul is on more of an even keel. Dad fixed the me getting shot part, but then I didn’t know where anyone had gone, since our phones don’t work in different universes.” 

Purgatory Dean looked at my chest and asked, “You’re soul?” I nodded. “You’re okay?” I nodded again, and he relaxed a little before he looked at everyone else that was around and said, “You wanted to stay away from my brother to keep him from going dark?” I nodded again, and he relaxed a little more before he saw the book Sam had and went over to take a look at it. I don’t think I was going to lie to them anymore . . . I’d told him the truth, but I’d lied by omission, and I didn’t – 

“Sure, you turned it around to make him think you were looking out for his brother, but what if he tells your Dean? Do you really think your Dean will be okay with it, especially with me being a demon, and it being right after you killed his brother for what he did to me? Not a chance . . . No point in them knowing.” 

I looked behind me and gave Demon Dean an annoyed look. “Don’t play your mind games with me, demon . . . I know –“ 

He made sure everyone was else was looking at the book, before he leaned closer and said, “What you know is that your Dean accused you of fucking half the camp and punched a wall, just because you told him you weren’t sleeping with him on his terms anymore, and that was before he really went crazy.” 

“Shut up.” I turned back around to keep my eye on the three that hadn’t gone with my Dad to find us a place to stay. 

“Beth, let’s fuck . . . Let’s not fuck . . . Let’s fuck . . . You know you should find someone else to fuck . . . Let’s fuck . . . Let’s not fuck, but I don’t want you to fuck anyone else either . . . Those are mind games. I’m just looking out for you . . . When he’s like that, he makes you his prisoner.” 

_You’re not looking out for me. You’re looking out for you._

He leaned down and whispered just behind my ear, “I could fuck anyone I want anytime I want . . . I don’t need you for a piece of ass.” 

_I don’t doubt that for a second._

“You want me to prove it? I’ll get the next straight woman I see to fuck me.” 

_Yeah, sure . . . go for it._

He ran his nose down my neck and said, “Think I see her. Smells like she’s got me all over her already.” 

_What are you doing?_

“I wanna fuck you again.” 

_I thought you were just saying –_

“Yeah, but it’s not nearly as much fun to fuck someone when they don’t know you’re a demon . . . I know that you don’t really care about anything but having my cock in you right now . . . You giving me my happy ending was more important to you than giving Cain and his woman theirs. It’s not really up to you though, is it? As far as I can tell, we’re not on a hunt, so if I wanna fuck again right now, then we’re gonna fuck again right now . . . unless I hear your safe word . . . yeah, that’s what I thought. You go left. I’ll go right. Tell ‘em you want to go to that gas station and get a look at the dates on a paper. Tell them to wait for you, but just go to the fence on the other side of them. I’ll meet you there.” 

**I did it.** I don’t know why I did it, but I did. I walked towards the gas station and then doubled back, so I could show up at the wooden privacy fence that was maybe 6 feet at most away from Sam and two Deans, and he was already there. He told me to face the fence, unbuttoned my jeans, and bent me over at the waist, told me to plant my hands flat on the fence, and then he had a little feel, said I was already good to go, and plowed into me with a single thrust. It was almost impossible to not cry out, and it got harder the more he pounded into the right spot over and over again, and I guess because it hadn’t been that long since the last time we had sex, it didn’t take long for that sensation to start to build, and then he stopped. I didn’t know what he was doing, and then he told me to say, “I love it when you fuck me, Dean. I want you to keep fucking me. I won’t tell anyone about it.” 

**_No, we’re_** not playing that game. I pulled my jeans up, and turned around to face him. “No, you’re not going to make everything in my life about sex, just so you can control everything I do. This is a moral quandary, not a sexual one.” He looked pretty pissed off about it, and then he looked to our right. _Did they hear us? Are they coming to investigate? Probably. They’re a bunch of pervs._ I wasn’t there long enough to find out. 

“I thought you were going to leave me there.” He grabbed a hold of my jacket to push me up against whatever was behind me, and I thought he was going to be rough the way he was earlier when he got pissed off, but when his lips got to mine, he was gentle, and I guess it was for the same reason he went gentle earlier too. It was his way of acting out his vulnerability about something without him knowing that’s what he was feeling, and it made me want to take care of him. That fight earlier and this right now where what made me think my Dean was in there . . . whether that was wishful thinking or not, I wasn’t sure, but why the hell else couldn’t I keep my hands off this man? 

**He was** still hanging out of the front of his jeans, so I gently grabbed ahold of him, and he flinched a little, like he wasn’t expecting it before he brought his hands up to the sides of my head and pulled back to look at me. 

“I didn’t tell you to do that.” 

“I’m still learning?” 

He rolled his eyes and said, “4 weeks,” and my hand started slowly stroking him. 

“You want me to stop?” 

He gave me a brief smile with a shake of his head before he said, “But that’s 5 weeks,” and when his mouth came back to mine, he kept it slow, so I did too. By the time he dropped my jeans and had me kick them off, we still weren’t a whole lot faster. He picked me up, was slow with the entry and his movements, and made sure there was lots of slow kissing that mostly made me feel happy. This really didn’t feel like we were fucking. It felt like something a whole lot more than that even though it would appear we were in an alley somewhere. I think it was the best sex we’d had so far. It was everything I needed on a physical level, but I think it must’ve been what I needed on some kind of an emotional level I never let myself think about too. The storms that were always raging inside of me seemed to be slowing down a little in way they hadn’t since . . . well, probably since we got sent on that 13 year training mission.

When he got closer to finishing, he rested his forehead beside my head on the wall, so he could concentrate on making it last longer. We’d already been going for what felt like a really long time, especially considering I was just supposed to be getting a newspaper from a gas station about a quarter mile away, but I don’t think he wanted to stop, and I was glad he didn’t, because I really opened myself up to him, and that knot in my lower abdomen that’d been going from tight to shattered to tight to shattered all day really just decided that it’d had enough of the back and forth, so when it gave way this time, it was like waves rolling in one after the other, over and over again. 

When my Dean and I made Rogue or pretty much any time we had sex in that cabin in Wyoming, we took our time and were able to hit the next level up from multiple orgasms to a full-body one, and we’d kind of melded into one, but I was good with this. I probably hadn’t had one of these since . . . that weekend in the do-over life when I rented a cabin in Arizona for his birthday. Right now this Dean looked like the furthest thing from a demon, just a man who’d gone quiet and was putting everything he had into holding out longer, but he couldn’t hold out forever. After he came, he didn’t put me down straight away. In fact, he didn’t put me down at all and just kept his forehead on the wall while he tried to catch his breath. 

“Was thinking maybe I should stab you, and we can pin it on someone that ‘got away.’ Gotta come up with something . . . If you tell them, they’ll make you stop, and I have to see this through to the end . . . whenever that is . . . just know it can’t be now. I can’t quit you . . . not yet . . . and if you tell anyone I said that I’ll kill you and them.” I laughed, and he stood up to look at me. “I’m serious.” I laughed again until his lips found mine. Down below it started feeling like he wanted to go again. “Can’t help it . . . Don’t know what you did to me, but . . . all I wanna do is fuck you all the time.” His recharging abilities were phenomenal. They were a lot faster than mine.

As he pushed back into me, I gasped into his mouth a little and said, “I’m gonna be sore tomorrow . . . sore now . . . won’t be able to walk straight.” He smiled into the kiss before he went a lot slower and shallower and said, “Then order up some lube, and I’ll leave you alone for a couple of days.” 

_I can’t . . . feels wrong to –_

“Chuck, we could use some lube . . . you’re the reason –“ 

He started laughing and looked at the bottle in his hand before he looked down at his crotch. “Figured that might work. All I’ve gotta do to put in a call with God is fuck you.” 

_What? Oh no._ I shook my head, and he smiled while he squirted some of the lube out onto his hand and said, “Relax. He's all right with it, or he wouldn’t have given this to me, right?” 

_That’s not the point. He couldn’t –_

He gave me more of a genuine smile while he came back to my mouth and said, “I won’t do it again,” and then he used the gift, and I was extremely grateful we got it . . . even if the way we got it was never happening again.

 **I stumbled** back to where I’d left the guys another hour after that with a knife in my back. I should’ve taken his idea for a cover story a little more seriously. I couldn’t even say for sure that he was the one who threw it, because if he did it, he threw it and disappeared by the time I looked back, which meant, I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t see who did it. What I didn’t say was that I had a pretty good idea who had done it, and I was thinking that this was a definite drawback to dating a demon.

My Dad took care of it when we got back to the abandoned house they’d found. When he was done he said, “I know you’re trying to figure out how to exist without him even though he’s right beside you, and there may be some validity to what the demon said about the Dean with a Sam, because if it came down to you or Sam on a hunt, that Dean would choose Sam every time, so he’s not really right for you, but what about the other one? I know he’s lonely. I also know he won’t throw a knife in your back. Does it have to be the demon?” I swiveled in the chair to look at him, and he added, “Is it the whole keeping it a secret thing that you like? If that’s it, then you could just tell the lonely one to keep his yap shut.” 

Laughing, I asked, “Is it that obvious?” 

Dad rolled his eyes. “He may be able to read all your guys’ minds, but I can read everybody’s minds . . . I’ve had to start shutting him off more and more the last 2 days.” 

“Sorry about that. Guess we’re even for all the porn I found in your room that one time.” 

Dad’s face went a little pale, and he told me that wasn’t funny before he added, “No . . . we’re not even . . . not even close to being even. I’ve had to shut your Dean off for years . . . and that’s including the 11 ½ years we relived his glory days when he was at his peak.” 

I smiled a little sadly at that and said, “You know it’s him, don’t you? You just said I’m trying to find a way to exist without him even though he’s right beside me, and I mean I have asked and asked for him to be brought back, but if he’s already here, then I think I have my answer from Chuck on why he hasn’t been brought back yet.” 

“He’s with one of them. I just don’t know which one it is . . . If you want my advice, stop with the demon and try the others out . . . My vote is for the lonely one.” I laughed, and he said, “What? They’re like a bunch of stray puppies. They need a nice owner to take care of them, and he needs one the most . . . You went from the abused German Shepard that’s been set on fire to a wolf who got into the litter somehow. You’re smart to stay away from the relatively happy German Shepard who already has an owner . . . Try the German Shepard that got thrown in the river to be drowned because nobody wanted him.” 

Oh, that sounded, so sad. “But what about –“ 

Dad shook his head. “If the wolf is happy being the guy on the side, then let him be, but keep him at arms length, so he doesn’t keep biting you and everyone else.” 

“Even if he doesn’t understand it, I think he feels something for me, and it feels less like an obligation and more like something he really wants.” 

“Yeah, I know he does . . . That’s why I said to keep him at arm's length. He’s been around for less than a week, and he’s already throwing knives at you to give you two a cover story, so he can stay with you longer. What do you think he’s going to do to the others the longer this goes on?” I guess that’s a good point that I hadn’t thought about. “Or you could cure him and talk to the real him to get his take on things . . . underneath it all, he’s the one who is feeling those things for you.” 

_I think that’s my Dean, but what if it’s not? What if he’s really under the guy who got the Mark in the first place? What if he’s not there at all?_ “But what about –“ 

Dad patted me on the knee while he stood up and said, “Just think about it. You don’t have to decide anything right now.” 

_He’s somewhere nearby listening, isn’t he?_

Dad looked towards the door of my room, and whispered, “Not for long, but I think he gets the point,” so I smiled and said goodnight before he disappeared. 


	62. The First Blade

Dean stared at the blood soaked shirt on the floor before he looked at Beth. “Did did it work?” 

She picked the shirt up while she said, “Yep.” 

Why didn’t he know what she was thinking? “Are you blocking me?” 

She didn’t answer him and went to walk around him, so he pinned her up against the nearest wall to make her tell him, and she calmly asked, “Why are you mad?” 

“I asked you a question first.” 

“Yeah, you did, and if you don’t know what I’m thinking, then I think you have your answer.” 

_What was with the attitude?_ “Why are you being such a bitch?” 

She bit her bottom lip and cocked her head to the side, like she was trying to understand something before she squeezed her hand up between them and put her bloody shirt in his face. “Am I being a bitch for no reason, or were you the cunt that made me one?” 

He didn’t know whether to laugh or be mad, so he gave her a sarcastic laugh while he pulled her back and slammed her into the wall again, and then he landed his mouth over hers, relaxed, and put his arms around her, so he could hold her. She thought when he acted out aggressively that she could tell how he was really feeling by the way he kissed her. Apparently, she thought he was sorry this time. And she was letting him know what she was thinking again. 

“I already know that your Dad knows.” 

She paused before saying, “I didn’t know how much you heard, and I didn’t want you to hurt him.” 

“He’s on the no-kill list.” He’d meant that. 

“Thought I was on the no hurt list.” 

He shook his head. “That’s during sex. If we’re gonna spar, then you’re going to get hurt.” 

“That’s sparring. I think throwing knives at my back when I’m not expecting it could be seen as not playing very nice with me, and you told me when we met, you’d play nice with me.” 

She had him there, and it pissed him off, so he glared at her shouted, “I gave you fair warning!” 

“When you were begging me to keep –“ 

He pushed her away from him. She fell into the wall, and he started pacing back and forth. “Why are you trying to piss me off?” 

Tossing him the shirt, she said, “Take a good look at it, Dean. All of that blood is mine . . . I couldn’t breath, because you punctured a lung . . . Sure I’m used to getting injuries like those, but –“ 

He threw the shirt on the ground and went back to her with the intention of shutting her up which he did, but he was holding her again and being gentle about it, and it was really confusing. He didn’t really understand it, but he kept it going, because it made him feel better for some reason he couldn’t explain either. 

A few minutes later, after he’d totally calmed down, he asked, “So, when your Dad healed you, did it heal everything?” 

She didn’t know what to say that, because it weirded her out, but he got from the look on her face that she was okay now, so he took her hand and led her to the bed before he pushed her gently back onto it. “You’re not tired of –“ 

He shook his head while he crawled over her. “Not even a little bit.” He felt like doing a slow buildup again. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was because he thought there was plenty of time for rougher stuff another time or maybe he wanted to try and recreate what happened in that alley the first time or maybe he wanted to see if he could make it even better than that time or maybe it was another peace offering? Regardless of the reason, he was planning on spending all night in here. He couldn’t actually believe how much time he was getting to spend with her without anybody noticing other than her Dad, and that’s only because her Dad could read his mind. Keeping this a secret wouldn’t be nearly as hard as he’d thought as long as she kept her mouth shut. 

\---------------------

He knew he was good, but did he just kill her? She wasn’t answering him, and her eyes didn’t seem to be registering him at all. Her soul looked bright, so she had to be in there somewhere. He put his ear on her chest to listen for a heartbeat and felt her hand come up to the top of his head, so she could pat him like a fucking dog, and he felt himself relax. Lifting his head to look her, he asked, “Where the hell did you go?” 

She gave him a small smile with a little shrug, and he wanted some of whatever the fuck she’d had. She looked chilled as fuck. As for him . . . He felt like he might be good for now . . . Didn’t feel like he had to sex her up again straight away. Whatever itch he’d been trying to scratch had been scratched, and he was starting to think that it hadn’t had anything to do with his cock. It’d been something else. He’d taken them to a whole other level this time, and whatever part of him it was that had needed to find that place had had its needs met. He returned her smile with one of his own before he moved up to rest his forehead against the side of her head and wrapped an arm around her. Felt like he wanted to savor the moment too now that he knew she wasn’t dead. 

She was out not long after that, and he didn’t really know what to do. Didn’t really want to start feeling like he should be killing and without the killing like he should be doing something without knowing what it was he wanted to do. He was good with not feeling that for a change. He wanted to hold onto that feeling of peace just a little longer. Watching her, he thought she looked a little cold, so he pulled the sheet up to cover her a little better. Her Dad had definitely set this place up to not be a shit hole while they were here. The bed that used to be in here probably would’ve given them both crabs, but it was like a 4-star room in here now. “You may not have been a princess in Heaven, but you are now, huh?” 

At the sound of his voice, she rolled to face him and wrapped an arm around his waist while she snuggled into his chest. His hand slid up her back to where he knew the knife he’d thrown had landed. Might’ve been too good of a throw. Knew that the second the knife left his fingertips. “You’re just pissed because you couldn’t breathe, right?” 

Moving his fingers to the tips of her hair, so he could play with the ends, he said, “And I know Cas used to do a lot worse when you were training with him . . . but I guess that was training, and he could heal it . . . He betrayed you though, didn’t he? I mean he took your memories and your daughter from you.” His gaze flicked from his fingers to the top of her head. “Maybe you really believed that if the German Shepherds and Black Labs keep biting you, the wolf wouldn’t?” His arm slipped around her, and he rested his face on top of her head before he added, “I won’t do it again.” 

He grinned when she muttered, “Okay, wolfie . . . Trying to sleep here . . . You tired me out today.” 

_Well, if she was awake again –_

She looked up at him and said, “You’re kidding right?” 

Well, he had been, but he hadn’t expected her to be listening to what he was thinking. His hand slid up to brush the hair out of her face, so he could plant a soft kiss on her lips, and she kissed him back, so it went on for a while. Whatever peace he’d found earlier, he was still feeling, so he was good with just kissing her and pulled away before too long, so he could wrap her back up in his arms. “Get some sleep.” He had some dream surfing he wanted to do to figure a few more things out.

He was still pretty chilled out the next day when the rest of them were talking about whatever it was they were doing here. “So, since we’re here at roughly the same time we were in the last timeline, I think this might be another Bizzaro universe.” 

Well, if none of them were going to say it, Dean would. “Yeah, they’re all thinking it could be that, or maybe there’s just a bizzaro you in this universe that needs to be taken out again.” 

Beth looked at everyone. “Well, you can all think it, or you could just go check out –“ 

Sam cut her off from behind his laptop. “Rachel McCoy . . . already found her.” 

Beth’s eyebrow arched. “She doesn’t happen to be a veterinarian, does she?” Sam didn’t say anything, so Beth tried, “She went off the grid so she’s a hunter . . . When?” 

“She was 17.” That’s why they were thinking they needed to take her out, because the last one disappeared when she was about 17. 

“Why is everyone okay with taking me out? You don’t see me saying, ‘oh let’s just give Cain a little help with taking the Dean with the Mark out,’ do you?” 

The solo-Dean quickly said, “Nobody said anything about taking her out,” before he looked back at Demon Dean and said, “Except him.” 

Beth looked at everyone again. “No, but you’re all thinking it . . . Well, good luck with that.” When she and her bags disappeared, Dean grinned. 

Sam got whiney first. “Why’d you tell her that?” 

“You don’t think she has a point? She’d take the hit for any one of you, monster or not.” Dean laughed and shook his head at the thoughts and looks going around the room before he stood up and added, “Nobody else is seeing it? It’s okay to put another one of her down, because what she is means that if something fucked around with her, there’s more of a chance another her is a monster, right?” He flashed his eyes black to remind them he was a demon. “You can’t go more monster than me, but here I am . . . in one piece. See you in Ohio.” 

Then he went to check out Cain’s graveyard. Hadn’t really thought she’d be here. The big showdown should be tonight or tomorrow if they were going off the dates in the last timeline. Just wanted to make sure she hadn’t landed on top of Cain. Next up . . . the farm where that Reynold’s kid lived, maybe? What the hell was that address? He knew Beth looked it up on the plane to West Virginia . . . Got it, and this was definitely the right place.

Beth was running around in circles, ducking and diving to stay out of the reach of a new Dean and Sam pair, while she shouted an exorcism. Crowley was frozen and flickering. The killing exorcism didn’t seem to have any effect on Dean, but it wouldn’t. He was a special demon. 

Cas popped up in front of her and grabbed her, and that seemed a little unfair, or Dean thought it was until she stabbed her angel blade into Cas’s leg to make him let her go. Sam tried to stab her for doing that to Cas, but she disarmed Sam and hit him in the nose with the palm of her hand before giving him a dirty look and running around again to stay away from the other Dean while she went back shouting the exorcism. 

Hunting wasn’t really his thing anymore, but why weren’t any of them shooting her? Didn’t look like any of them had any guns, and he bet they always had guns. Unless she disarmed them, the knives weren’t coming out of their hands either. She hadn’t known what she was walking into and must’ve accounted for weapons when she asked Chuck to be sent here. Not sure where Rachel was though. Could be anywhere. 

The other Dean finally tackled her and slammed his hand over her mouth to make her stop the exorcism. Dean had the First Blade in his hand before he realized it, but stopped. _Should I help?_ It’d looked like she had it up until then. He’d told her she was in charge of when he killed unless he had to protect himself from someone with the Mark. That Dean had a Mark, but that Dean wasn’t attacking him, so he didn’t need to protect himself. Didn’t really feel like killing right now anyway. He knew as soon as he did, he’d lose the peace he’d been feeling since – 

The Dean that had her went to stab her in the chest with the knife in his hand, and Demon Dean used his powers to throw that Dean towards a tree. Well, they all knew he was here now. This was going to get messy. 

The Sam and Cas here at the farm just wanted to get rid of Cain, but that Dean with the Mark . . . He was a different story. That guy might be scared of going back to being a demon, but underneath it all, the reason that Dean hadn’t wanted her to kill Crowley was because if Crowley died, he thought he’d never get the First Blade again . . . and now there was another First Blade in play.


	63. Another Rachel

I looked to my left and saw Dean, black eyes, First Blade in hand. Shit. I looked to my right, and Cas, Sam, and Dean were all looking at him. Out of those three, Dean was the only one who could hurt him, but that was not a battle I wanted to have happen for a number of reasons. 

Glancing over at Crowley, I finished off the last couple of lines. I was hoping the final flash from him dying would be a decent enough distraction that I could use it to get back on my feet, but the next thing I knew, Demon Dean was standing in front of me. He jerked back a bit, and then his hand went to his thigh, so he could pull something out of his leg. When he dropped it on the ground . . . I went from looking at the bloody knife to looking up at his back. _Did he just take a knife for me?_

“Thought we were supposed to be immune to trying to kill you, so why’s he trying to kill you, Beth?” 

Uhh. “Actually, as adults, you’re the only one who wasn’t a serious threat to me the first time we met . . . And I did just stab Cas and punch Sam . . . But really it’s because he lost Rachel . . . Gadreel killed her when she tried to stop him from killing Kevin . . . Dean didn’t know that he’d join her if he held out a few more days, and losing her gave Crowley a way to push him into getting the Mark earlier than anticipated. He doesn’t think I’m human . . . She’s dead. I showed up out of thin air. Then their weapons malfunctioned or disappeared until I could finish the exorcism . . . I could see why he’d think that. Seeing me running around in what he thinks is her body is like a huge slap in the face.” 

I’d gotten to my feet by then and every time I tried to look around him at the others, he took a step in that direction, so I couldn’t do it. He asked me what I wanted him to do, and I thought it was incredibly sweet. “Well, I don’t want you to kill them, and we need to de-escalate, not escalate, so maybe put away the black eyes?” I saw his back muscles relax a little and asked if I could talk to them. 

“They can hear you fine from there.” 

_If they’re so dangerous, why aren’t they making a move on you?_

“He can’t look at you yet. He can just about handle hearing your voice now that you’re not yelling an exorcism and trying to kill his only way of getting the First Blade. He sees mine and wants it . . . He’s thinking of a way to get it . . . might want to hurry up on your speech if you don’t want me to kill him.” 

“Uh, well . . . If you want that Mark off your arm, you can’t kill Cain. If you kill him and Sam gets the Mark off of you, it’s the end of everything, not just here, but in my universe and this Dean’s universe . . . There are a lot more universes than just yours. We have 2 more Deans with us, one Sam, a very human Cas, my Dad, and my daughter . . . We’ve been to a lot of universes, but we didn’t bring someone with us from most of those . . . just 4 . . . Our job is to stop you from releasing the Darkness. The Mark is the lock on a cage that is holding God’s sister . . . Amara, AKA, the Darkness. If God is a creator, she’s the destroyer . . . ask Cas. He knows the stories that everyone in Heaven thinks are just stories.” 

_Was that okay?_

Dean relaxed a little more and said, “Could’ve stopped at ‘if you want the Mark off your arm, you can’t kill Cain,’ but I think they get it.” 

Hearing movement, I looked to my left just as Sam came into my field of vision. _Oops._ “I’m sorry about the nose. I just really wanted to kill Crowley . . . He never dies when he should.” 

Sam smiled briefly. “I’ve noticed . . . What’d you mean when you said he would’ve joined her if he’d waited before getting the mark?” 

Course he’d pick up on that. “The way it’s supposed to work is that after two soul mates meet and connect, when one dies, barring extreme circumstances, the other will a few days later, because they don’t want to live without the other one. That’s the real reason your Dad brought her on the road with you . . . It just must’ve taken a year for him to finally get that’s what she and your brother are, because I’m guessing they met when she was 16. 

After your brother got the Mark, he essentially became immortal unless someone else with the Mark kills him, and I think if he dies with it, then he’ll go nowhere the way Cas would if he dies, because he’s not quite human anymore, but if he loses the Mark, I honestly don’t know what’ll happen . . . Maybe he’ll still end up with her in a few days, or the moment has passed, and he has to wait a bit longer, but he’ll go wherever she went when he dies, and they won’t be separated again . . . ever. And if you’re worried about being left out . . . I’m guessing you have an Ash and a Roadhouse in your Heaven, so you’ll be able to see them again. That’s where everyone we’ve lost hangs out.” 

Sam glanced in the direction of where his brother was standing and said, “You have a daughter?” 

Yeah, and I was looking forward to seeing more of her again when these Cain timelines were finished. It just wasn’t safe for her to be around us right now. “Yeah, she’s a little over 2. Her name is Rogue.” 

Sam went from looking at his brother to me and laughed. “Rogue Winchester?” 

“Yeah, I let her pick her name. I gave her a list of comic book characters with green eyes, because I just knew hers would be green, and she smiled everytime I said Rogue . . . Maybe because I smiled when I said it, but it stuck long before Dean found out what I was doing.”   
Sam looked a little sad and happy at the same time before he cleared his throat and looked down. “If we get out of here and go somewhere Cain isn’t killing his descendants, I can have my Dad bring her if you want.” 

“By Dad you mean?” 

_What’s with the cautious look?_ “My real Dad.” Sam looked like was holding his breath, so I assumed maybe the Rachel in this universe didn’t know who helped create her. “Yeah, uh, it’s complicated . . . but he raised me. He was a great Dad . . . I don’t want to spoil the surprise if you don’t know.” 

Sam looked sad again and glanced towards his brother before he nodded and directed his attention at the Dean in front of me. “Is he getting the Mark off too?” 

I smiled when Dean said, “Fuck no. They’re not curing me either so don’t even think about it.” 

Sam looked at me for an answer, and I shrugged. He gave me a sad smile again before saying, “What about Cain?” 

Uh, well. “We could have my Dad send him to a different planet . . . I’d prefer not to put Dad in any danger though, so we could always try Death, or maybe I could –“ 

The Dean in front of me cut me off. “You’re not doing that.” 

My eyes narrowed at his back. “Why not? I’ll just take him to Colette, and she can have a word with him. It worked for 150 years the last time she saw him. Maybe it’ll work longer this time.” 

He finally turned to look at me. “I don’t want you near him . . . You see this?” He lifted the First Blade in his hand and said, “He doesn’t need it to kill, but he needs it.” 

_What does that have to do with anything?_

“He can get it by getting to me through you.” 

_No he can’t_. 

“That was the Cain yesterday . . . This one doesn’t know anything about me. I’ll meet him on my own, and –“ 

“The only reason that worked was because you were half dead, talking about his wife dying, and trying to give him some kind of absolution for what he did by saying the same things she used to say to him.” 

“So? He didn’t kill her. He helped her die. He actually saved her. At least –“ 

“Yeah, I know . . . I heard. You’re still not going anywhere near him.” Something made him relax instead of getting more aggressive, and then he added, “We’ll summon Death. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have her Dad do it. If that doesn’t work, I’ll kill him and stay in his place.” 

_What? Nice try._ “You don’t mean that. You’re just trying to manipulate me into not seeing Cain by saying something one of you who isn’t a demon would say. You know how I know that?” 

He smiled briefly. “Why don’t you enlighten me?” 

“You have to know that if you kill Cain, then if they do the spell to get the Mark off of that Dean, it’ll come off you too, and Amara will still get out . . . I’ll ask Chuck to bring Colette to Cain, so she can talk to him that way, and if that doesn’t work, then we’ll try Death, and then Dad.” 

“I knew you’d see things my way.” 

“You didn’t win anything. We’re brainstorming and coming up with ideas.” 

Sam cleared his throat and looked a little confused, as he said, “I, uh, he’s from a different universe than you?” 

Dean turned to look at him and said, “Yeah, her universe is a wasteland. Her Sam destroyed it . . . released the Croat virus, started turning the people left into monsters or feeding them to monsters for his war with Crowley and Raphael. My universe is more like this one, except I never had a Beth.” 

Sam still looked confused. “And you started this how long ago?” 

_I have no idea._

“I’m Demon Dad, but I’m not the kid’s Dad if that’s what you want to know.”

_But what about –_

_Shut up, Beth. That’s our secret, and we don’t even know if he is part of me . . . They don’t need to know. It’s a bad idea. Just trust me._

_Okay._

Dean looked back at Sam and said, “Beth should talk to your Dean before the rest of them get here. I think she could use his help on a few things . . . but not here. We should go before Cain shows up . . . if your brother really wants this blade, then Cain wants it more, and I’m not looking for a fight . . . trying to control that.” 

Sam looked a little confused again and looked from Dean to his brother. “We’ll meet you at the first bar two towns over?” 

Dean rolled his eyes and said, “North, South – West. Got it.” Then he disappeared. 

Well, this was awkward. Sam decided to break the ice. “So, are you going with us, or are you finding your own way there?“ 

_Very diplomatic, Sam._ “I assume you mean by asking God, not walking two towns over, right?” They all just looked at each other, so I said, “I mean that’s how I got here . . . by asking God. See, I have a Mark too. You just can’t see it. God’s not locked up, but mine connects me to Him, not his sister.” They still didn’t look like they knew what to say to that, so I added, “Mine makes people want to kill me instead of making me have to kill . . . I mean I kill all the time, because it’s part of the job, but I don’t get a high from it or anything, and I do it to try and save the light in the world, whereas the Mark of Cain seems to be about destruction, like Amara is.” 

There was still general confusion amongst the three of them, so I turned to the Dean still standing there. “I can show you if you let me get closer.” He looked at Sam, and Sam nodded for him to do it, so I walked up to him slowly, and I didn’t feel as nauseous as I did when I first met Demon Dean, but it was there a little the closer I got. I never felt nauseous around Demon Dean anymore. I guess I’d gotten used to him.

Stopping in front of Dean, I said, “Do you feel that? Maybe you even felt it when you were chasing me around and tackled me, but you weren’t focused on it, so it wasn’t as noticeable as it is now that the adrenaline has gone way down, right?” 

He looked really sad, but gave me a brief nod, so I reached my hand out slowly to touch the Mark on his arm. When I connected, we both got a jolt. He took a step back while he grabbed ahold of his arm, but quickly changed his focus from me to behind me and shook his head at Sam and Cas to let them know to stand down. “Opposites doing the same job of saving the universe. You’re holding back the Darkness, and I’ll save the light if it comes down to it.” 

He looked a little sad and angry at the same time before he looked over my shoulder again and said, “You two go catch up with him and make sure he doesn’t burn the place down.” 

_We really shouldn’t stay here if -_

Dean cut off my thought. “You can get us out of here before Cain shows up, or God can, right?” I nodded, so he looked at Sam and Cas and nodded towards the car to tell them to get going.

As soon they got into the car, Dean started pacing back and forth. “You’re lying. Let me see your arms.” 

_You won’t find it._

Showing him my arms, he went to touch them to see if he could find anything, but pulled back a little. “It only happens when I touch your Mark with the intention of touching it. You won’t get a shock any other way.” Quickly grabbing my forearms, he did a more thorough examination, so I said, “Why are you –“

“Because you come from a long line of Tricksters don’t you? It’s probably hiding in plain sight.” 

“You caught that, huh?” 

Looking back up at me, he said, “Gabriel? Seriously? She was there when he died. Did he know –“

“No. God made him take me . . . He wouldn’t have known otherwise.”

“Why would you sign on for something like this? I mean I know why I did, but you? . . . I don’t get it. I’m guessing you think through every option to outmaneuver your opponent . . . and your opponent was God, and I don’t know how well you know him, but you can’t trust a deal from anyone.“ 

I know. “I’m fully aware that he’s a trickster. I know there could be something I don’t see coming, but I did go to him with the idea when I found some things in a book.” 

He stopped pacing and said, “So, you set up the deal?” I nodded, and he said, “Something about being trapped in Heaven . . . I got that when you touched me too. Do it again. I have to understand this.” 

I wondered why he got that from me touching his Mark. Now I wondered if Demon Dean’s Mark is really how he got my life story, except it didn’t take physical contact with him because of him being a demon. Now that I thought about it, he didn’t do that dream surfing thing with any of the rest of them. It was a new thing for me to ponder, I guess. 

I didn’t really know why it was so important to this Dean to know why I’d made the choice I did, but I figured I owed it to him after killing Crowley. “Just remember that I’m not her.” 

I put my hand out palm up, and he looked at it for a few seconds before he exhaled a sharp breath and planted his forearm into my hand. The initial jolt was there again, but it was only there for a second, and I held onto him to keep him from pulling away that time. I didn’t know what he was seeing, but he had a serious look on his face, like he was present and concentrating on something else at the same time . . . until he fell to his knees, and I let go. 

“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?“ There was fresh sheen of sweat on his forehead when he looked up at me, and I went to give him a hand up, but he got this determined look on his face that I knew meant trouble, and then he grabbed ahold of my arm in such a way that I was touching his mark again. “I don’t think I should –“

“Do it.” 

_Okay, but you asked for it._ That time he started going pale and shaky a couple of minutes later, but he had really firm grip, so it took a little while to pry his fingers off my arm, and then I took a step back from him, so we couldn’t do it again. Looking up at me, he nodded to let me knew he wouldn’t try it again and then rested his head on his knee while he tried to collect himself. I think that might’ve been a bad idea.


	64. MOC Dean

Dean wasn’t sure what the hell just happened, but he should probably say something, because she was starting to feel awkward and had just sat down to wait until he was ready to go or get up or do something other than sit on the ground trying to keep it together. She wasn’t his Rachel, and she was, and the things that’d been done to her . . . He wouldn’t want any of those things happening to her anymore than she probably wanted those things happening to any of the other Deans she’d come across. “Rachel’s stuck in the veil. I haven’t seen her, but Kevin said that’s where they are. If I’ll go where she is . . . do you have any idea if I’ll be able to find her?” 

He finally looked up at her, and she looked for a second, like she hadn’t thought of that before she looked him in the eye, with an expression that said she wanted to show him something. “Chuck, if you want this timeline to work out, you might want to let him see his soul mate and then send her where she’s supposed to be.” 

He laughed and said, “There's no way it's that easy,” but then she looked behind him, and he looked over his shoulder. A few seconds later, he was on his feet and looking down at Rachel. At first, it still didn't register that it was really her until she smiled, and he couldn’t help it. Everything he’d been feeling since he watched her die came flooding to the surface. He started wiping his eyes, so he could see her, but it wasn’t long before she went totally blurry, and maybe he might’ve kept trying to say he was sorry, except he kept choking on the words, because they weren’t enough, and then he just closed his eyes, because he was about to break down or maybe already was, and he didn’t want her to see him like this.

“Dean, look at me. I haven't got much time.” He exhaled forcefully and nodded before he brought his hand up to wipe his eyes again, so he could what she asked, and he thought he was going to lose it again, but she said, “You and me were in on that Gadreel secret together. It’s not your fault. I’m good . . . You know what’ll make me better? You getting that Mark off, but I want you to stick around for a while before you meet back up with me . . . as long as you can. You do that, and I’ll make sure everyday for forever is like that weekend we took off and went to Hot Springs.” 

That was a great weekend. He tried to smile through the tears and said, “Deal.” 

Relaxing a little, she smiled back and said, “I’m holding you to that.” He loved that smile, and he hadn’t seen it in so long, but then it and she disappeared, and the only way for him to find comfort was by crouching down to wrap his arms around his head and block out the day. It didn’t work. He still broke down.

He didn’t know how long he was there, but he was just starting to pull it together and think about the job he had to do in getting this Mark off, so he could be with her when he heard her voice say, “She’s not as tall as I would’ve thought.” 

_What?_ Dean looked over at the other one, and she explained, “I’m guessing she had her grace for a while, like until you came back from Hell, or she would’ve died with you . . . I’m surprised she’s not a lot taller than me.” 

He guessed that Rachel was a little taller than her, but not by much. He hadn’t really thought about it. “What do we need to do to get this off my arm?” 

“How do you feel about a quick trip to Spain?” 

_What?_ She smiled at his confusion, and then the next thing he knew, it was the middle of the night, and he was crouching in some burnt out old building. 

“Are we in Spain?” 

She hummed, “Mm hm,” as she walked past him and started heading down the dilapidated stone stairs behind him. 

Standing, he asked, “What are we looking for here?” 

Pulling a flashlight out of her pocket, the other Rachel started walking through the basement halls and said, “I could’ve given you the Book of the Damned we picked up in the last universe, but I figured you needed a quest, and a change of scenery. The book is about this big.” She showed him the dimensions with her hands and then added, “And some old crazy nun made the pages out of her skin. It’s got some seriously bad mojo linked with it . . . I think we can feel it. It might have a negative effect on you, so when you pick it up, you need to do it with your shirt or something. I can’t really touch it, because I’m not sure that it and I won’t get zapped to another universe if I do.” 

Yeah, okay. He climbed over the fallen beam she did and then under a bunch of rubble before they got to a room to their right. She crawled in there and then over to a sidewall. Putting her hand up to the wall, it looked like she was feeling for something, and then a few seconds later, she started using her angel blade to dislodge the bricks, so he grabbed a knife and started helping. She seemed to think this is where it was, and to be honest, he didn’t really think she was wrong, so maybe she was right about them being able to feel where the book was.

When the wall came down a little more, Dean could see something back there, and it already looked like it was covered with some kind of cloth, so he reached in to get it, but she put her hand over his and said, “Uh, maybe you shouldn’t touch it at all. We could –“ 

It was fine. He pushed his hand past hers to grab ahold of it, and then he didn’t know what happened. Maybe some of the cloth slipped away . . . She wasn’t kidding about the bad mojo. This book was loaded with it, and it was a seductive kind of bad that held hands with the kind of bad he got from the Mark. He heard someone say his name and then felt something smack his hand, so he dropped the book and looked at the face next to him. Took him a few seconds to recognize the face, and the fact that it did shook him, because Rachel or not, that face should never be unrecognizable to him. Looking at where his hand was and then at the book, he said, “We can’t use this.” 

“Well, we can’t leave it. There are seriously bad people looking for it, and now we’ve broken it out of hiding. We need to at least make sure nobody else gets it. What if I ask Chuck to remove your Mark? I don’t know if he will, but I could try when you’re ready.” 

Okay. If getting rid of the Mark meant he might be dead a few days after it happened, he needed more time with Sam. “What if that doesn’t work?” 

“I promise I’ll get that Mark off you. You’ll be with Rachel again.” Okay. Rachel always kept her promises. 

Looking back in at the book, Dean said, “Might be right about me not touching it . . . What’d you have in mind?” 

She used her angel blade to pull the book closer and then took her belt off, so she could carefully pull it under the book without touching it. Then she fastened it tight around the book and nodded towards him. “Give me yours too, so we can use it as a strap.” 

As long as he didn’t have to touch that book again, he was fine with that. When she had the whole thing put together, she told him to pick it up, so he hesitantly put his hand on the strap and pulled. Didn’t make him feel like he was courting evil. He smiled and thought maybe being on a quest wasn’t such a bad thing. 

As soon as they were above ground, Dean said, “You’re a lot like her, you know.” She ducked her head, and he added, “I don’t know what happened with the crazy you . . . what her Mom did to her, but you’re as much like my Rachel as all those Deans you’ve picked up are like the one you know.” 

She exhaled a sad laugh. “Got just about everything, huh?” 

He guessed so. “That’s one of the reasons he wanted me to talk to you, isn’t it? Didn’t your Dean say something about you needing to see another you to know you weren’t bad.” After she gave a noncommittal shrug, Dean added, “And I don’t know what’s going on between you and the demon . . . He might be twisting some things around to get what he wants, but . . . if you think he’s him, then maybe he is. I mean you’re the one who’d know wouldn’t you?”

“I know enough to give me hope, but I’m still now sure I’ll ever see him again . . . I mean I think he’s in there, and I feel torn . . . I want to like the demon as he is, because he’s trying . . . but if I get too attached . . . what if it’s not him?”

“Your Dad said he’s in one of the 3, right?”

“Yeah, but I’m not going to test them all out, because if my Dean’s not in the other 2, I don’t want it to create problems. Right now, we’re working well as friends, and my Dean was right, if he was a part of one of them, he should be the dominant one, but compared to the demon and mark? How can he be stronger than that?”

“How do you think Gabriel knew he was in one of the three?”

“He really doesn’t want me with the demon. He could’ve said it for that, or he could’ve genuinely gotten flustered by the whole thing and let it slip. It came out the way it does when he doesn’t mean to say something Chuck doesn’t want him to say, so I think it’s the second one . . . or maybe I’m wrong, and he wanted to give me hope too. I don’t know. Plus, I don’t really think it’s fair if that’s what happened. My Dean would’ve never gotten the Mark . . . no offense, it’s just . . . I told him about it for years, and he had no reason to get it. I mean my Dad could take care of Abaddon, and Dean -”

“Wouldn’t want to because of what it might do to you with that supercharged connection you two have?” She nodded, so Dean said, “Well, then Gabriel must’ve been right. I mean you’d be dead if he weren’t, right?”

“What if the other two are keeping me afloat, but not strong enough for me to make it for long if I don’t believe I’ll see him again and that’s why he said it? I mean why aren’t I feeling the effects of that Mark?”

“Can you? Maybe the one you have is counteracting it.” 

Beth glanced off to the side and said, “Yeah, uh, do you want to meet the others? There’s something else we can do if we’ve got 6 Men of Letters on the books now. It’d save a woman, and 6 is more than enough though to keep us from having to bleed anyone dry to save her.” 

Well, that was a complete dodge if he ever heard one. “Just do me a favor.” She looked at him, and he said, “Listen to your Dad . . . The demon is doing a hell of a lot better job than I would’ve thought he’d do, but he’s too unpredictable and dangerous . . . I know you don’t want to cure him and find out he still doesn’t know if he’s your Dean, but it’s not game over if he doesn’t. He still might be in there, just hidden under the guy with the Mark. If he’s not, Chuck told you he wouldn’t bring you guys back until the mission was over, so he’s not waiting for you at home. 

Let’s say he’s stuck in the veil the way Rachel has been and is just going from universe to universe with you guys until this is over because Chuck had to retire him for a while for some reason . . . I know that if that were me and I knew the only way she’d been able to stay alive until the end was by doing what you’re doing and clinging to someone she hoped was me, then I’d get over it as long as I got to be with her again, so do whatever you have to do to stay alive, and your guy will get over it. 

And if you’re worried about the guy under the demon being pissed about being cured, he won’t be. He really doesn’t want to be a demon . . . With the Mark, I’m guessing that he won’t want to get rid of it until he gets you back to your universe if he knows there are other Cains and Dean Winchesters with the Mark you’ll be going up against, but as soon as he gets you home, he’ll want it off too . . . If that happens, and you find out your Dean is a part of him, but won’t ever get to come back to the surface again . . . I know the man behind the demon is ready for the kind of peace you could give him. That’s something the others can’t understand and yours couldn’t either for way too long. And I know that if your Dean does show back up at the end, then the guy underneath the demon will do the right thing and take a step back.” 

She watched him for a few seconds and said, “You’re going to die, aren’t you? I mean when this Mark is off.” 

He didn’t know, but he sure as hell knew he was ready to have the kind of peace Rachel gave him after the last year. “I’m gonna do what she wants and try to keep going for as long as I can, but I don’t know if it’s up to me. Hoping she understands that. Might have to make sure I explain it to her until she does.” 

Smiling that smile he hadn’t seen again until today, Beth said, “Must’ve been a hell of a weekend in Hot Springs.” 

He grinned at the thought of it. “Yeah, it was. Think that’s the first thing I’ve had to look forward to in way too long. If we need a lot of blood for the next thing you want to do, we should get going on finding the others . . . but maybe I’m not ready to see your daughter. It’s not something Rachel and me ever really thought about doing, and seeing what that would’ve been like . . . probably not a good idea.” 

\----------------

Dean led Sam and Cas into the house Beth had given them directions to earlier. Seemed all right, or it did until they got to the living room. All three froze when they got to the entryway. It was like being in the freaking Twilight zone. His Sam leaned into his shoulder and muttered, “This is really happening, right? I mean Cain didn’t actually kill us, and this is what Heaven looks like now, is it?” 

Dean laughed before he looked around the room again. “Better not be what either one of our Heavens looks like . . . How do you guys all tell each other apart?” 

Demon Dean started off by flashing his eyes black and said, “Well, they call me Demon Dean. There should be another one here wearing a silver amulet. He was the first one on the team. Human Cas, Beth, Rogue, and Gabriel are from his universe. They all just call him Dean, but he’s MIA right now.” Demon Dean pointed at another one Dean and said, “That one they picked up in Purgatory. I call him the Boy Scout, and that’s his brother.” Then he pointed at another one and added, “This one was about to go with Crowley on their little road trip to find the First Blade when Beth showed up and derailed the whole thing . . . He jumped ship without his brother after he tricked the Boy Scout into telling him how to do it. Think he’s my favorite, but I don’t have a name for him yet.” 

Yeah, giving a round of introductions was definitely a sign of who the leader around here was, and that’s exactly what the demon was doing even though he shouldn’t have wanted to lead anything and the others shouldn’t have wanted to follow him. If the Dean who was missing had been the leader, then Dean thought maybe this was a tick in the win column for Beth's theory.

Sam laughed, and Demon Dean said, “What? I’ve gotta out do the kid. She calls him Dog Dad.” 

Directing his attention towards the Boy Scout, Sam said, “Right, and you’re Demon Dad . . . What’s she call him?” 

Demon Dean grinned at the general discomfort of the other Deans before answering. “Uncle Dad. He and the other one both love being called Dad even if they pretend like they don’t. They’re always trying to out do each other to see which one is her second favorite Dad.” 

That was probably true. There hadn't been a smart ass remark out of either of them, probably because they couldn’t come up with a way to do it without saying anything bad about the girl. They got to play around with being a Dad without actually being one or having to try and make a family work with the little girl’s Mom. The only Dean not doing that was the demon. He’d say the demon wanted the Mom without the kid. Yeah, he was going to fix this before they left, since none of the rest of them were going to do it. He owed it to Rachel, and he owed it to her double that’d definitely paid her dues when it came to deserving something good in her life.


	65. Ambush

Sam eyed Beth’s morning cup of hot chocolate. She was taking forever to finish it, and she wanted to drive ‘her’ car. If it didn’t start to kick in soon, she’d probably crash on the road to where they were going. The rest of them really should’ve noticed something by now, but maybe they were just so used to her getting to drive ‘her’ car in any universe they went to that they didn’t think there was anything suspect about he and his brother saying she could drive it here too. 

No way would Dean let her drive that car or probably any of the others out of the bunker. He glanced at the other Sam, and that Sam shrugged, like he didn’t know what was taking so long either. That Sam was the one who suggested going this way with it when he’d overheard Sam and Dean talking last night and decided to butt into their plans. 

Beth finally finished her breakfast and took it to the sink. They had to make sure they got the timing on this right, and they always had to be on the lookout for Demon Dean, because he’d know what they were planning if they thought about it around him. Finally, it looked like something was happening, because she put both her hands on the counter and stared at the sink before she shook her head to clear it and looked over at the other Sam, who was standing closer to her. “No, –“ She took a step forward and started to go down, so the other Sam caught her before she could hit her head. Apparently, if she got an injury, it’d at least alert Demon Dean, but if she was drugged, it wouldn’t, and they’d given her enough to take down a horse, so she should be out for a while.

The other Sam picked her up and carried her towards her room, and Sam nodded to his brother, who was in with the others, to signal that he should start getting the others out of here. The bait was ready . . . Sam didn’t know how none of the rest of them could tell she and Demon Dean had a thing going on. It was pretty obvious to him, but maybe that’s because of the way he saw Demon Dean be with her on that farm in Ohio. Watching Demon Dean try to talk her out of finding Cain by herself had almost been like watching his brother trying to talk Rachel out of doing something dangerous, and Demon Dean had definitely been protecting her from them and asked her what she wanted him to do almost like he was asking for permission to kill them, and when she’d told him no and to de-escalate the situation, he’d relaxed, and his eyes had gone back to being normal. His brother had noticed it too and had decided to go on some crusade to save this Rachel from . . . something. Whatever it was, he was keeping it to himself. Sam and the other Sam mostly just wanted to cure one of their brothers of being a demon.

Dean got the rest of them out the door, and everyone that was supposed to be driving there with him or Beth was all that was left. As soon as Dean was sure they were gone, he went to get into position and maybe 5 minutes later, Sam was pouring himself another cup of coffee to look relaxed when he heard, his brother voice behind him ask, “You seen Beth?” 

Turning to look down the hallway, Sam said, “Yeah, she said something about not feeling well. I think she went to go lie down.” 

“Funny. She seemed fine to me the last time I saw her.” 

Sam kept his mind relaxed and refused to think about what was really going on. “I don’t know . . . She said something about feeling the way she used to feel when she was pregnant with Rogue or something. You think I should call them back, and have her Cas talk with her? Maybe she needs her family around her now.” 

Demon Dean froze for a few seconds, and looked over his shoulder towards the hall. “You could, but I’m thinking it’s nothing. She used up a lot of her soul power recently . . . She’s probably just drained from that. I’ll go get her and tell her to put a move on it. This was her idea.” That’d been almost too easy. By the time Sam got there, his brother and the other Sam had already trapped Demon Dean.

After the initial shock of being trapped had worn off, Demon Dean went really quiet and just threw seething insults out at them every once in a while. Apparently, the other Sam was in some serious trouble if Demon Dean got loose, because this was the second time the other Sam had not only been a part of trapping him, but it was the second time he’d taken Beth out to do it. Sam wondered what happened there, and just thinking that brought Demon Dean’s attention down on him. “The Evil Sam tasered him and took me to his own private torture chamber. First it wasn’t so bad . . . He was just slicing and dicing, but then he decided to start lapping up all that demon blood . . . split my ribs apart, pulled my lungs out, like a fucking butterfly . . . let my guts fall on the floor . . . poured gallons of holy water all over me, so I couldn’t heal . . . you know the drill. I mean it’s what you’d do to your brother if you got the chance. Both of you.” 

Sam looked at the other Sam, and that Sam wouldn’t look at him. _So, it was true?_

“Yeah, see . . . He knows what happened . . . He saw that Sam rage out with the black eyes and demon voice, and that Sam hadn’t drank any demon blood in years . . . It was just always in him, same as it’s always been in you . . . You think those fucking trials actually purified that shit out of you? They didn’t. It’s just who you are. Why do you think you were supposed to be Lucifer’s fucking vessel long before Azazel ever bled into your mouth.” 

Sam’s brother was blessing the ground with holy water, when Demon Dean’s eyes locked onto him. “You let them drug her? Tell me how did it work out for your Rachel . . . You always making the decisions for her?” Dean ignored it and went to get a syringe full of blood, so Demon Dean tried again. “Did you tell your brother your planning on dying as soon as you get the Mark off, so you can go be with her?” 

_What?_

Sam looked at his brother, and Demon Dean said, “Yeah, he knows his time is coming. He can feel it . . . See, Beth got God to let him see Rachel the other day, and now Rachel’s in Heaven, so he knows what he’s got waiting on him up there . . . Why do you think he’s doing this? He’s trying to do one last good deed before he goes. Where do you fit into those plans, Sammy?” 

Sam watched his brother, and Dean might’ve said, “He’s lying. He’ll say anything to stop us,” but he wouldn’t look at Sam. 

“He’s lying, or you are? You weren’t even going to tell me?” 

Demon Dean butted into the conversation now that he’d found an opening, “He’s a coward. He can’t tell you that’s what he really wants more than he wants to stick around with you.” Turning, Dean splashed Demon Dean in the face with some holy water, so he could get some space to stab the syringe into his arm, pushed the plunger down, and walked out of the room. Sam hated this part of the cure, so he went with him.

“Dean -“ 

Dean turned to face him and looked back towards the room before saying, “We shouldn’t have gotten the other you involved. He talked us into drugging her, and if he finds out why I’m doing this, he’s gonna be pissed about her choosing the demon over his brother. She already has enough problems as it is. She may not want to know, but she needs to know if this is her Dean, and doing this is the first step in finding that out. Even if he’s not, and her Dean is gone, this is the right guy out of the three that are left . . . maybe even the best guy out of the four, Sam. She needs us to do this even if she doesn’t know she does.” 

Okay, but that’s not what he’d been about to ask, and Dean knew that. “And what he said?” 

Dean looked away and said, “Rachel told me to stick around as long as I can. I told her I would, and I meant it, but after the last year, I’m looking for peace, and I know I’d have it with her . . . That’s how I know this is the guy. I mean look at how he is with her, and he’s still a demon . . . The guy underneath all of that, the guy like me, he’s going to be looking for the same kind of peace I am once he’s cured. He won’t leave her like the rest of them have or would. Maybe I wanna do something to fix what happened with Rachel, but I can’t, and now there’s another one here, and I can help her. I want her to have better than she’s gotten after everything she’s been through. All she’s ever wanted was an honest to god partner, one that’s going to take her as she is, who will go into the battles she’s had to face beside her, not in front of her or behind her, and definitely not without her. It’s gotta be this guy.” 

Sam slumped. Dean hadn’t talked this much about Rachel in a year. “You really saw her? How’d she look?” 

Dean’s eyes teared up a little before he smiled. “She looked good . . . Promised if I stuck around as long as I could that she’d make it up to me when I got up there.” 

Sam smiled sadly and looked away. Killing Kevin when Gadreel was in him had been hard, but killing her . . . He’d grown up with her. He’d loved her like a sister. He’d killed part of his family, and nothing had been the same since. He missed her everyday. “You really think Beth is her?” 

Dean looked back towards the hall to her room and said, “Yeah, there are some differences, but mostly she’s the same . . . depending on how long they’re here, I’d expect some kind of retribution for this . . . think it must run in the family.” 

Sam smiled again before he glanced towards the sound of Demon Dean’s voice. “You really think the other me will give her problems?” 

“So far you and me haven’t said why we’re really doing this, and so far the demon in there has been careful about what he’s said . . . If he slips up once, then it’ll come out. Right now that Sam is on her side, but she’s had bad luck with her Sam . . . Maybe because of the Mark on her soul, and I don’t want her to have bad luck with another one.” That opposite mark that made people want to kill her was something to consider, but she’d been living with it for a long time now, and she was still alive. Sam hoped what they did here today didn’t put her in danger for the rest of her mission. 

They had a long way to go on this cure, but if the demon in there felt the same way Dean did about the rest of them not knowing she was with him, and the demon held off on saying anything as long as the other Sam was in there, then didn’t that mean that he was trying to protect her or protect what they had? “You’re sure he’s not the right guy the way he is?” Dean looked at him in disbelief, and Sam shrugged. “What? You’re doing this for her, not him. He’s the only one that wasn’t a serious threat to her when she met them. You saw the way he took that knife for her without hesitation and the way he stood down when she asked him to do it even though I think he wanted to kill you . . . He’s a smart aleck, but he’s a lot more mellow than you were.” 

Dean rolled his eyes. “Just keep your eyes and ears open for anything that might make the other you suspicious. Get him out of the room, find another way to explain it that he’ll believe, and then take his mind off of it with something else.” 

Yeah, he could do that. “Sure, but if Demon Dean is worse after he’s cured than he is now, you’re the one that’s killing him and putting him back this way.” He smiled at the look Dean gave him before he watched his brother go back in there. 

His brother might think everything had been perfect in retrospect and that everything would still be perfect if Rachel was here right now, but that wasn’t necessarily the case, and it more than likely wouldn’t be the case once the guy in that room was cured of being a demon either. Once the guy in there was cured, he’d still stand in the way of his own happiness unless something happened at the start to make him get past that. 

Sam had seen time and time again the one thing that had always made his brother stay with Rachel whenever his brother was having doubts about whether or not she was better off without him. If his brother really wanted this to work, then there was something they were going to have to do that his brother really wouldn’t be on board with doing. Sam would make sure it got done, and he’d make sure he did it in a way that wouldn’t tip the other Sam off on why he was doing it. They’d probably all get a battering for it, but maybe it was worth it.


	66. Failed Attempts

_”Wake up, Beth . . . Fucking wake up! Wake up, wake up, wake up!”_

_”Be quiet, brain. I feel like crap. Did I go drinking last night?”_ I felt sick and had a headache and was really groggy until I heard something not of this world, and it sent chills down my spine. “What . . . the . . . what?” I rolled over onto my back, but the noise had died down, and my eyes closed again. 

_”Wake up, Beth. I need you to wake up. Wake up.”_

My eyes opened again. “Dean?” I looked around the room and didn’t recognize where I was . . . until I did. _The bunker? What the hell am I doing here?_

_”Beth? That you?”_ I looked around again. I didn’t know why I was in the bunker, but I knew that I was Beth. 

_”Yeah, this is Beth. I don’t know what’s happening . . . Why do I feel sick?”_

I waited for a few seconds and started to close my eyes again. _”Beth, they’re coming . . . I think they might drug you again. You need to move. Hide until they’re gone, and then come find me.”_

My eyes popped open again. “Dean?” 

_”Yeah, get a fucking move on.”_

I rolled over onto my side again, and then I decided that rolling was about all I could do. Sitting up was not an option. Rolling again, I landed on the floor with a thud before sliding myself under the bed. _”I’m under the bed. Is that okay?”_

I waited for him to respond or someone to show up, but my eyes started closing again. _”Bed’s fine in just about every horror movie never.”_

I smiled. _”I’m sorry. I’m just so tired, and I feel sick, and I don’t know what’s happening . . . I hear someone.”_

He got back to me a lot faster that time. _”Make sure your really hidden under the bed, and not just, ‘You think your hidden, but you’re really doped up and everyone can see you,’ hidden.”_

I pulled my arms up to my chest and brought my feet together. I didn’t think I was tall enough to have them sticking out at the bottom. I checked the blankets to make sure they hadn’t followed me under the bed too. _”Think I’m good.”_ I got that out just before boots came into the room. 

_”Don’t go to anyone. Not me. Not Sam. Not Cas. Got it?”_

Yeah, I had it. I was hiding from Sams and Deans and Cass. I held my breath when I heard a Sam in my room start calling my name, or maybe it was two of them. They both sounded exactly the same. It was hard to know. _”Why are we hiding from them?”_

I closed my eyes again, while waiting for him to respond and the Sams to go. _”They’re trying to cure me.”_

My eyes popped open again. _”Okay, as soon as they fuck off I’ll be there . . . Pretty sure I know where they have you. How long have they been at it?”_

He was quiet again for a while, and I started to worry. _”Too fucking long.”_

I heard the Sams going somewhere else that wasn’t in my immediate vicinity, so I slid out from under the bed and rolled over onto my hands and knees. Crawling to the door, I peeked around the corners and then crawled down the hall and to the room diagonal to my room in the direction I wanted to go. I heard someone coming again and hid under a desk until they’d passed. Then I crawled out and was a little faster crawling to a room diagonal to that one in the direction I wanted to go. I thought I was making pretty good progress. 

_”How are you doing, Dean?”_

I didn’t wait for him to respond until I made my way to the next room. I just went and was rewarded with, _”Pretty fucking terrible.”_

Listening for Sams and going when I could, I tried to move a little faster. When I was almost there, I heard him roar again. They’d given him another injection. It couldn’t have been an hour. Were they just doing that half-assed cure and pumping him full of blessed blood? Must be. 

_”I’m not far. Can you get them out of the room?”_

I waited until I got something from him that time. I needed intel on what we were dealing with here. _”Sams are gone. Can’t get this Dean out of here, and if it wasn’t for Cas, I think I could walk out of the trap.”_

So, he was pretty close to being cured. _”Banish Cas when you get the chance. I’ll create a distraction. Don’t kill anyone when you get out.”_

Everyone kept saying I should let him be cured, but he really didn’t want it. We could get the Mark off of him, but to do that, you had to sacrifice someone. I hadn’t thought of that when I told Cain or the Dean from this universe about the cure, because I hadn’t remembered what the cure entailed until the Dean from this universe said we couldn’t use the Book of the Damned. I’d been swept away by the tragic stories of Cain and Colette and Dean and Rachel, and I just hadn’t thought about the horrible sacrifice part of it. That’s why I was going to sacrifice myself. Just needed that Codex the rest of them were getting now and – 

_”That’s why you wanted that fucking thing? You’re not sacrificing yourself.”_

_”It was my mistake. I’ll suffer the consequences.”_

_”Sam did the cure in all these timelines, so he can do it in this one and live with the fucking consequences.”_

_”We’ll talk about it later.”_ I crawled towards the room I wanted, opened the door, and just crawled right on in. “You can’t do this to him. It’s cruel, and he doesn’t want it.” 

“Couldn’t come up with anything better than that?” 

Looking at the Dean tied up in the chair, I groggily replied, “Talking to Dean is the only thing I can do at the moment. Can’t really walk.” 

I didn’t get to see his reaction to that, because the Dean from this universe crouched down in front of me to stop me from making it to the trap. “He doesn’t know what he wants. I do, and it’s not this.” 

“You know it’s wrong, or you wouldn’t have drugged me.” 

I heard Demon Dean say, “He drugged you, because you were bait.” 

If I was just bait then why was I only now waking up. This cure took hours to complete. “No, I refuse to believe that they gave me enough drugs to knock a rhino on its ass simply to use me as bait. They wanted me out of the way, or they wouldn’t have given me so much, and they wouldn’t have been coming to drug me again.” 

I went to crawl around Dean, and Dean moved in front of me again. “Nobody was coming to drug you again. I didn’t know how much they gave you. As soon as I found out, I sent them to check on you, not – “ I felt something sharp sting my shoulder, and then Dean looked past me towards the door. “What the hell are you doing, Sam?” 

I don’t know what happened after that, but I suddenly felt worse, much, much worse and fell on my face. _”Dean? Don’t kill anyone . . . just don’t, but I think I’m in trouble.”_

After that, I don’t know what happened, but there was a lot of noise in the room. _What’s happening? Did he get loose? Just turn your head. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t turn my head. I can’t do anything. What’s happening? Don’t kill him; don’t kill him; don’t kill him; don’t kill anyone; just let everything be okay, please, please, please._

And then my breathing started spasming out, and I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t control anything. I think I got tranqed with one of my darts that’d been left over from when I went to get Dean the last time somebody said they were going to cure him. How the Sams got it, I didn’t know. Whatever k-hole they sent me down was not a good one mixed with whatever it was they’d given me before this. I didn’t want to go out like this. It was supposed to be on a hunt, or I don’t know. Not like this . . . I felt like I was suffocating, and I didn’t want to black out and stop breathing. Did this count as something that’d kill Dean? Should I start blocking him? Could I even do that? Was he even here anymore? I couldn’t think straight. I’d long since gone into panic mode by the time someone came over to roll me onto my back and check on me.

“Hey, wow, uh, your lips are going blue.” Dean looked somewhere else, like he was looking for help before he looked back down at me again and told me to follow his finger with my eyes, but I couldn’t. “You’re still in there right? I can’t tell. Can you blink?” 

_No. I can’t do anything._

“Tell me what to do.” 

_How am I supposed to know? And even if I did, I can’t talk. I can’t breathe. I –_

“Hey, you couldn’t breathe with Alistair that one time, right?” 

_I can’t even nod._

“You don’t have to nod. I’m still picking everything up . . . just think, okay? No pressure. What’d you do when Alistair was standing on your chest? Focused on the pain, right?” 

_Yeah, but –_

“I know you’re not in pain . . . I could stab you. Think that’d help?” 

_Uhh._

He smiled before he said, “Yeah, that’d probably be a bad idea . . . Think we’re gonna have to ride this out here. Not sure you’d make it to the hospital.” 

_I can’t ride this out. I can’t . . . I just want to breathe. I -_

He leaned a little closer and told me to focus on him. “How about this? I know how to breathe and you don’t, so you try and do it with me?” 

_I can’t –_

“If you can jump start your heart from nothing, you can do this . . . Doesn’t have to be deep breaths right now. Just watch me and try to get your lungs working when mine do.” 

_”Okay.” Contract the muscles to pull your diaphragm down, and that pulls air in, right?_ I didn’t know with my limited brain function. That’s what I tried to do every time he inhaled though. I couldn’t do it at first, because I had to find the right muscles to contract, and it was hard when I couldn’t feel anything in my body. Then maybe I got a shallow breath to every four of his. I wasn’t entirely sure that was any better than what I’d already been doing, but maybe it was more about synching up with him? 

“Yeah, that’s right . . . think maybe you could get it to 1 in 3?” 

_I don’t know. You’re eyes are going weird. So is your face. You look like you should be in that Black Hole Sun video. I like the song, but I hate that video. It creeps me out._

He put his forehead on mine, so I couldn’t really see him or anything else before he took my hand and put it on his chest. “Can you feel when I’m breathing?” 

_I can’t feel my hands._

He breathed out a laugh and said, “You’re not gonna make this easy on me, are you?” 

_No._

“Well, can you hear me breathing?” He took a deep breath, and I could hear it, so he said to just concentrate on breathing when he did by listening to him breathe and go for 1 in 3, and then it was 1 in 2 and then every breath. After that it was breathing when he did, but trying to pull in more air when I did it. I think we eventually got it.

_”I’m sorry. I’m a bad distraction.”_

He smiled briefly. “Actually a pretty good one.” 

_”They’re all alive?”_

“Might’ve given them a taste of their own medicine after I took the last hit, but they’re alive, and their Cas is who knows where.” 

_”You’re okay?”_

“Yeah, well you know . . . You might’ve been right about me leaving Sam behind. He’s gonna be looking for me for the rest of his life.” 

_”And the Mark?”_

“Not really worried about it right now.” 

_”Think I’m okay if you want to worry about you instead of me.”_

He smiled again and said, “Yeah, can you blink?” 

_”No.”_

“Then I’ll worry about my Mark later.” 

_”Or . . . you could not worry about it. You’re not bad when you’re a demon.”_

“You don’t have to worry.” 

_”About what?”_

“Nothing’s going to change with you and me.” 

_”What? No, I just don’t want you to torture yourself over the inevitable. It has nothing to do with me.”_

“You sure? I made you all kinds of promises and told you I could only keep them if I was a demon.” 

_”I just want you to be okay, and you were okay when you were a demon. I don’t want you to suffer.”_

“Just so you know, I’m gonna keep ‘em.” 

_”Keep what?”_

“The promises I made you.” 

_”You’re going to knock me out if I try to see Cain face to face again?”_

He smiled and then laughed. “Not after this, but I’d go with you. And I know you know what I meant. You’re playing dumb, and you’re good. You’re so good you’ve actually convinced yourself you are dumb on some things when you’re not. It’s one of the walls you had to build a long time ago.” 

_”Well, I guess you’ve got everything figured out.”_

“Not everything. I still don’t know if I am him, or he is me, or if I'm just me with your dreams attached . . . But I do know that if you could, you’d run out that door right now, but you can’t, so I’ll stop. Just wanted you to know . . . Maybe we should work on blinking next? Pretty sure your eyes’ll fall out if you don’t start soon.” 

_”You could close them for me.”_

“And miss out on hearing you try to figure out how to do it? Not a chance.” 

As soon as I got them closed, he said, “You still awake?” 

_”Yeah, I don’t want to fall asleep and stop breathing.”_

“Think you’ve got it down now. While I have you here . . . we need to talk about this cure for the Mark.” 

_”What about it?”_

“You and me both know Chuck isn’t going to remove his Mark. You can’t let them do the cure if it means killing someone.” 

_No, it’s okay. I’ll be the sacrifice.”_

“Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.” 

_So tired . . . I think . . . I –“_

I heard him laugh before he asked, “Are you faking it?” I didn’t think anything, so he gave me a little shake and said, “Hey, I’m serious. He won’t want that. He won’t want someone to die for him. I don’t care if it’s some immortal pet of Rowena’s or you. He won’t want it.” 

_”What was it you said to me?”_

“That was the demon talking.” 

_”Was he wrong though? In every timeline we’ve been to so far, Sam would’ve sanctioned it, and Cas would’ve stood around and let it happen. It’s what was always going to happen, or we wouldn’t be here. I made the mistake. I’ll pay for it. You didn’t see them together. I can’t –“_

“It’d taint whatever they have once he gets up there.” 

_”Not if he doesn’t know about it.”_

“She will.” 

_”I don’t care. She did her job, just like Colette did. She deserves it.”_

“Neither one of them did their job.” I opened my eyes, and he said, “Their job was to not die. Anything else you do or don’t do doesn’t matter as long as you get that right, and they didn’t.” 

_”That’s crazy. You can’t blame –“_

“Well, how about this then? If you let them sacrifice you, I will kill myself, go back to being a demon, kill off everyone on this team, and then it’s bye bye universe.” I laughed. It wasn’t much of one, because I could still barely move, but he caught it, and said, “Not exactly what I was going for there.” 

_”What’d you expect? That was ridiculous.”_

“You’re being ridiculous. You know what? It can’t even be you. It has to be someone that Rowena loves if she’s the only one powerful enough to do the spell.” 

_”Oh fuck it.”_

He relaxed a little before saying, “How about this . . . You and me do that time spell you know . . . I’ll show you where all the pieces of Abaddon are buried, and we’ll move them, so she can’t be put back together. We’re not interfering with Sam doing the trials, Gadreel, or Kevin and Rachel dying, but without Abaddon, Crowley won’t have a reason to introduce the Dean from this universe to Cain, and he won’t get the Mark. He’ll go where he’s supposed to go . . . with her.” 

_”But we’re not supposed to mess with time – “_

“You think buying hundreds of turkeys didn’t mess things up somewhere along the way? If it doesn’t work, we’ll fix it another way.” 

_”If it works, then it’ll be like we were never here, because we wouldn’t have had a reason to be here, so we wouldn’t have come, and if we didn’t come, then nothing will have been changed. You’ll still be a demon, and we’ll have to start over again.”_

He shook his head. “I think that time loop thing is only a problem if you stay in a tree branch, not when you’re hopping from branch to branch. We’ll remember everything, but the guys staying here won’t.” Okay. I guess it was worth a try.


	67. Mark to Mark

Dean finished marking a devil’s trap in the wet cement they’d poured over Abaddon’s head’s new resting place, and the next thing he knew, he was looking at asphalt. Must’ve worked. He looked to his right when he heard Beth ask, “Are you, you, or did we undo everything they just did?” 

She wanted to know if he was human or a demon? Either way he knew she was all right with it, which was a little weird and something he was going to have to get used to as much as he was going to have to get used to the idea that who he’d been with her for the last however long had been him and not him, because he’d been a demon. It was kind of meeting someone knew, but knowing everything about them. How should he play this? 

He gave her a cocky smirk. “I’m all me.” 

Looking at his belt, she replied, “Then I guess that’s still all yours.” 

He looked to see what she meant, and okay, he had the First Blade again. The guys in the last timeline had hidden it from him while they did the cure. Wasn’t sure about having it so close to him now. “You wanna take it, and just . . . keep it with your stuff?” 

She looked at her bags and stuck her hand out palm up. “Yeah, sure.” Uhh. Probably shouldn’t touch it even if it was just to hand it to her. She gave him a mischievous grin, said, “Just kidding,” and reached under his jacket to get it. 

“Wait!” She looked up at him to see what he wanted, and he started to say, “What about the mark on –“

Her eyes sparked ice blue for a second before she said, “Oh no,” and then quickly pushed herself away just in time not to puke all over the front of him. 

Well, at least she wasn’t dead or had to kill with it. He’d thought it might be a toss up between the two. Did make him wonder what’d happen if she was ever near God’s sister if just touching the First Blade had that kind of an effect on her. When she was sure she wouldn’t get sick again, she went to her bag to pull out a bottle of water and her toothbrush before she glanced up at him. “I’d suggest somebody else carry it, but so far we’re the only two here.” 

Now that she mentioned it . . . “Does it usually take this long?” She paused in brushing her teeth to shake her head. Yeah, he hadn’t thought so. “You think maybe we’re still in the same timeline?” 

It didn’t seem like she’d thought of that, so she gave it some serious thought, while she finished brushing her teeth. “I don’t think so. What we did wouldn’t have taken us to a completely different location than where the head was if that’s all it was, and we wouldn’t have all our bags . . . or my bags. When you were a demon, you traveled light . . . Maybe since we weren’t at the same time as them when we jumped, we ended up jumping to a different time in the same universe? Or that’s what I’m hoping?” 

This was messed up. When did the universe get so big that being in the same branch as everyone else was a good thing when they could be at any point in time or space along that branch? When the hell did he really start to understand time and space like this? “Think meeting you has wrecked my head.” 

She finally stood up with one of her shirts, so she could grab the First Blade and said, “Yeah, you’ll have that with me, so . . . Chuck’s not answering. We’re where he wants us for now, I guess . . . really hoping I didn’t just erase my daughter and everyone else.” 

Nodding towards her jacket, he asked if she had a picture of Rogue, so Beth reached into a pocket inside her jacket, felt around until she found something, and handed it to him. While he inspected the photo, she put the First Blade in one of her bags. She had a cute kid. Didn’t really feel like she was his, but she was cute. “She’s not disappearing, so she’s probably fine.” 

Turning back around to take the picture back, Beth smiled a little sadly and said, “Back to the Future. Who knew it might have its uses in a real world setting?” She looked at the picture and added, “It’s all we have to go on, so that’s what we’ll go with for now. We should probably go somewhere that isn’t the middle of a road in the middle of nowhere, so we can at least figure out the year.” 

Looked like they were walking. “Hey, can your Dad can hear you?” 

“Until I know the year, I don’t want to call my Dad. I could end up calling the wrong one.” Right. That made sense. He guessed. He didn’t really know what he was doing now. She was heading East from the looks of things. Starting to feel a little like a fish out of water. That was his first jump as him, and something had definitely gone wrong with it. This whole thing was freaking him out a little.

\-----------------------------

“Well, I wasn’t expecting this . . . at all.” 

“What?” They obviously weren’t even close in time to when they were supposed to be, or he didn’t think they were. They’d been sticking to the present or future, not the past, and looking at those cars, this was definitely the past. Dean went from looking out the window of the gas station to looking at the paper in her hand. _August 1, 1983._ Guess he wasn’t expecting that either. 

He looked at her, and she shook her head. “We can’t.” 

“Why the hell not?” 

“Maybe we’re supposed to be learning a lesson . . . I mean if we change that, it could make the entire tree disappear.” 

“Maybe that’s a good thing.” 

“What about all the people you’ve saved?” 

“What about all the people I’ve gotten killed?” 

“What about Fate? It’ll happen one way or the other.” 

“All you do is try to change Fate.”

Beth followed him out the door and said, “I’d prefer to exist, you know . . . What about you? You won’t exist either if we go messing around with things on the trunk.” He turned around to tell her it was worth it, and she said, “So, you’re the only one that matters? All those lives you’ve changed, all the lives your Dad changed . . . all the people that wouldn’t be alive without your family, who wouldn’t then go on to help or save other lives . . . none of that matters?” 

He lifted his forearm to show her the mark. “This matters. All the people I kill with it someday matter. I stopped doing more good than harm a long time ago, and what about you? Your shitty life never had to happen if you didn’t get tangled up in this tree.” 

She did not like that. “Yeah, but it’s my shitty life, and I’d rather exist than not.” 

Leaning towards her, he said, “Well, then you’re the selfish one, not me,” before he turned and started trying to find a car.

He was a little surprised she came with him, but he soon figured out that she wasn’t going to make it an easy drive with all her muttering about, “I’m not selfish. You’re selfish,” and, whatever else she was saying. He stopped to get away from it in a gas station for a few minutes, and when he came back, the first thing out of her mouth was, “You know we could just skip ahead to the part where you destroy everything. I have enough of the time spell ingredients left to get this done and over with a few times over.” 

Reaching over Beth to grab the stash out of her other hand, he gave her a barely concealed look of frustration and said, “I’ll get right on that. Knew you’d see things my way eventually.” He waited for her retort, but it didn’t come. She was silent as he started the car and stayed that way as he drove them somewhere quiet, so he could set the spell up. He was a little surprised she let him do it. Even told him where he’d gotten things wrong and handed him the damn spell on a piece of paper.

Just before he said the spell, Beth looked at her watch. “Looks like you’ll be too late to make it tonight. Should maybe do it for the day before that.” 

He finally broke first in this fucked up game of chicken he didn’t realize they were playing until now. “I know you’re not on board with this. What’s your game?” 

Holding the photo of her daughter up to his face, Beth said, “It’s whatever game I have to play to make sure this little girl is born. I’m willing to bet that I’m faster than you when the time comes . . . And I’ve got plenty of the time spell ingredients left, so I’ll just wait until the right time tomorrow. Or you could kill me now. That’s the only way-”

Standing to look down at her, he shouted, “What the fuck are you talking about? I’m not going to –“ 

“If this is the trunk of the tree, and you're chopping the whole damn thing down, then that is exactly what you’re doing . . . And you don’t care. You don’t care that you’re killing me, and maybe it is selfish of me not to want to disappear, like I never mattered, but I put everything I have into my life, and I don’t want it to just evaporate, and I don’t want you to erase Rogue. I don’t want you to erase every person I’ve saved or every person you and every other version of you has saved, or any of the people your Dad and brother have saved. That kind of devastation would be one hell of an accomplishment for your Mark, and I won’t let it happen, so I’m going to stop you, unless you stop me first.” 

_The Mark?_ He looked down at his forearm. It was giving him that sensation he got just before a kill. Is it because it wanted him to kill her, or was it because she was right, and he was about to give it what it wanted? “You think this is what the Mark wants?” 

Staring at his Mark, Beth said, “No, I think it’s what you want for a lot of reasons . . . You want to save your Mom, and you want to save your Dad and Sam in a different way. You think you can save the friends you’ve lost if you do this, but you can’t, because without you, they probably would’ve died a lot sooner or alone at the bottom of a bottle without their death having any meaning. You think it’s the only way to fix the mistakes you’ve made, but you’ll actually be doing far more harm than good. And I think that’d make the Mark extremely happy.” 

“What’s your Mark telling you?” 

Beth took a shallow breath before looking back up at him. “That it’s not an accident you were given your Mark. You’ve been holding back the darkness your entire life, and it isn’t fair, because the path you’ve had to take is difficult and requires the worst kinds of sacrifice, but you’re the only one who could do it. You’re far more important than you think, and so is the life you’ve lived.” 

He started to smile, because that’s what she thought, not what her Mark – 

She closed her eyes and put her hand on his chest over his heart, and then he was standing somewhere else. His back was to a wall in a white room. The walls, the floors, the ceilings . . . everything was white. On the other side of the room, there were two halls, one went left and one went right. Was he supposed to pick one? It was quiet in here . . . too quiet. He started walking towards the hall on his left, and the silence broke. He could hear something coming from that hall, so he took a step to his right, but the sound was coming from that way too. Cautiously, he took a step back, but the roar got louder and louder until it was deafening, like an invisible freight train barreling down on top of him. His back hit the wall where he’d started at approximately the same time, a tsunami of thick black tar came flooding into the room from the halls and started rushing towards him. He looked right and left again, but there was no way out. “Beth!” 

He heard her say, “You’re safe. I’ve got you. Just watch.” 

_Just watch? Just watch?! That’s easy for her to fucking say._ “Whatever you’re doing, I want you to –“ 

He involuntarily turned his head, closed his eyes, took a huge gasp of air as the waves were about to hit, and then . . . nothing. 

He waited about 10 seconds before he released his breath in a few short gasps and slowly opened his eyes, thinking that she’d brought him back, but he was still in the same place. It’s just that the black tar had stopped about 3 inches from his face and was surrounding him on all three sides. It was shiney and looked harmless, like it was on the other side of a pane of glass, but the way it felt . . . the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and it made him feel fear on a visceral level. He wanted it away from him. He wanted it away from him now, and that was before he started seeing faces in it. 

He was still panting, but his breaths came out a little slower as the faces started getting clearer. Some of them he recognized but couldn’t place. Some of them he knew. Some of them he didn’t. His head cocked to the side as . . . he remembered that. He watched a much younger him kill a werewolf, and in a flash it went onto another scene of another hunt and another and another and kept going. He didn’t know how long it took for him to realize that in order to see what was happening, he had to step away from the wall, but it was probably after he’d taken a couple of steps. 

He watched himself kill Azazel and had to take a big step forward. Things kept flying so fast that after maybe 30 seconds, and a few more steps, he saw the hunt he did just before he went to Hell, and jumped when the black sludge pushed forward and surrounded him, like a tornado, and then it unexpectedly poured down on top of him. It felt like he was drowning in evil for about a minute, and then the sludge spit him back out, but now he had it all over his clothes and hair and everywhere. It clung to him no matter how much he tried rubbing it off. He felt like it was taking over everything. “It’s on you . . . It isn’t you. Try walking into the darkness now, Dean.” 

He looked at the wall of evil and swallowed. “If I do this, you’ll let me out?” 

“It’s not a punishment, Dean. It’s what my soul thinks you do to make the universe better. You’ve been touched by the darkness, but that makes you better at clearing what’s left.” He relaxed a little before he looked back at the light part of the room behind him and then the darkness in front of him. She was showing him how he’d cleared it through each hunt. 

“I get it. Let me see what you think you do. I know it’s different.” The stuff that was sticking to him disappeared a few seconds later, and he was looking down at his clothes when the wall of evil flooded towards him and poured down on top of him, but didn’t quite touch, so he wasn’t drowning in it this time. 

It made him feel claustrophobic, which was bad enough, so he wasn’t expecting it when the darkness grew hands that started tearing at him and beating him and forced him to bring his arms up to block his head while he fell to his knees. It was kicking his ass until he heard Beth say, “If you can still see, then there’s light. Look for it, Dean.” 

His eyes searched for whatever it was that she wanted him to see, but he wasn’t seeing it. All he saw was that there was more tar under him. He couldn’t get away from it. Felt like he was in a black sea of rage and – 

Then he saw it, a speck of light about the size of a quarter near one of his knees. It started getting smaller, and he automatically cupped his hands around it to keep it from going out if that’s all the light he was going to get in this hellhole. As soon as he did, the light grew to the size of the circle of his hands. Just touching it made him feel calm in all of the chaos around him . . . Protecting the light. That’s what she did. There wasn’t much of it. “How do I make it bigger?” 

“Don’t let go of the light and fight back in whatever way you can.” 

How was he supposed to not let go of it? “Can I pick it up?” 

A little bit of a pause, and then she answered, “I don’t know. I just know that if I leave it behind, I won’t find it again.” Okay. He got what she meant. 

He didn’t have to say that he understood. The next thing he knew, he was standing in front of her again with sweat pouring off of him. “How long –“ 

She looked at her watch and said, “About 5 minutes.” He tried catching his breath and nodded before he asked how she did that. “I don’t know . . . I concentrated on how I feel about what it is you do and tried to picture it in a way that made sense, so I could send it to you? I can do something like it with angels, so I thought it might work as a Mark to Mark thing, but I wasn’t really expecting you to . . . you know, mentally go somewhere else. I guess I should have because when I touched the last Dean’s Mark, he got my life story for some reason.” 

Dean watched her for a few seconds and said, “Didn’t think of pulling me out as soon as it didn’t go the way you thought it would?” 

She looked a little unsure, but still answered, “It was important for you to see it. If it weren’t for you, all of that darkness you saw would’ve never been pushed back.” 

His eyes narrowed. “Think you should see what it’s like. I want to try it.”


	68. Soul Games

“You’ll probably have to – “ 

I looked down at his hand that was now on my chest covering my heart, and he said, “Is it working, or do I just look like a sex pest?” 

I laughed. “You need to concentrate on what it is you want me to see, and you have to really want me to see it. Use the charge you feel when you first touch me and see if you can grab it using whatever feeling you get from your Mark to get the message to me. Plus, you have to guestimate where the Mark is on the other person. It’s not just on your forearm. That one is anchored to the Mark you can’t see on your soul.” Looking more than a little annoyed, he told me to forget about it while he turned to go back to the driver’s seat of the car, so I followed him and said, “Try it again. Make the connection happen first, and then figure out whatever it is -” 

He turned abruptly, the palm of his hand was flying towards my forehead, and then everything went black. I was aware that I was floating in a big black void of nothing, so I didn’t think I’d been knocked out. A few seconds later, I was looking at him looking at his hand. “Where’d you go?” 

“I was floating in a black void of nothing?” He looked at his hand again before he nodded towards my forehead, like he wanted permission to try again, so I shrugged. Seemed only fair. I hadn’t gotten his permission to do what I did.

He went again, and this time I wasn’t just floating in nothing, I was falling in it. I heard his voice say, “Show me what you would do,” just before I landed in a lake of . . . I didn’t really know what it was, but I really didn’t like it. It was thick, so you couldn’t swim in it. I guess you could say it was like quicksand, evil quicksand that wanted to suck me under and make me evil too. 

The more I struggled, the deeper I went until I was up to my chest in it. I didn’t want my head to go under. I couldn’t see anything, because everything was pitch black, so I didn’t know if there was an edge nearby. _Okay, what would I do?_ Uh, I thought about what I did after what happened with Kushiel, because the stickiness of his liquid fire threatening to destroy me is actually what it reminded me of a little. 

I closed my eyes and calmed down by taking a couple of slow breaths before I focused my awareness inward. If everything else around me wanted to annihilate me, then I was the only thing I could trust. As soon as I found the inner core of my being, I started pushing my awareness outward, so I could separate my entire being from the evil surrounding me. I had to find where I began and where it ended, and then after I did that, I relaxed when I realized I could tell the difference. I wasn’t evil just because the quicksand tried to make me evil. 

I felt a certain kind of serenity take over and tried to search outside myself for the same kind of peace anywhere else in this desert of darkness. It didn’t have to be close. It could be pretty far away. As long as I knew I wasn’t alone and that it was out there somewhere, I could keep the peaceful feeling going in me and not be pulled down by the quicksand, and I knew there had to be something else out there because no matter how small, it’s always there somewhere even if I couldn’t see it. 

“Open your eyes, Beth.” 

“I haven’t found –“

“Just trust me. Open you eyes.” 

Exhaling, I did what he said, and I could see it. Way off in the distance there was a tiny little sparkling light. I’d say it was a star, but it was at eye level, so maybe it was a lighthouse or something? _Okay. How do I get to it?_

I closed my eyes again briefly to make sure I was still able to find where I ended and the evil began, and I thought I could, so I opened my eyes again and tried a step towards the light to see if I’d sink. Nope. As long as I stayed calm, I didn’t succumb to the quicksand. Maybe I even came back up a quarter of an inch. Cool. 

I made it about 10 steps, and then Dean said, “Uh, I hate to do this to you, but I know what I want you to see now. This is going to suck, but it’ll be over in a minute,” just before I felt something grab ahold of my foot and yank me under the evil quicksand. Of course I panicked. I hadn’t taken much of a breath, and now that I was under, there was nothing but evil quicksand everywhere. Under there long enough, and you start to forget which way is up and which way is down and you can lose yourself in it. No, I wouldn’t, couldn’t let that happen. 

_Focus on your core. Find that, and it’ll be okay. Calm down and find it._ Looking like what? I looked down at my clothes. I guess the lighthouse was clean, and I was covered in evil residue. Didn’t particularly bother me. “No, why would I stay out here when I could be in there? The further I get away from the quicksand, the better off I’ll be. If I trek evil everywhere in there, I’ll clean it up and get started on doing what I have to do to make sure this thing doesn’t fall down.” 

I heard him exhale a laugh, and then I was standing in front of him again. “You got what I was trying to show you, right?” 

Yeah. Yet another Dean saying the same thing I’d been hearing for years. ‘I’m bad. I’m bad for you . . . blah, blah, blah.’ I quickly put my hand over his heart again before he could stop me and visualized the lighthouse. I pictured it starting to age, crack, and crumble and then I pictured a big tidal wave of quicksand rushing towards it. Wasn’t very nice of me really, because he had a pretty negative physical reaction to it. 

“This is the way the lighthouse really looks, and this is what it’s facing.” Just before the tidal wave hit, I lifted my hand and added, “When you were a demon, you could see the shiny side of my soul, but I’ve been inside it . . . It’s an ancient ruins, not something pristine, or at least it isn’t anymore, not after my Dad’s memory blocks fell.” 

He took a couple of deep breaths and said, “I wanna see it.” 

“What?” 

“Your soul . . . I wanna see it for myself.” 

“How do you know you haven’t seen it already? If you aren’t him, then you can’t do what -” 

He got that determine look that meant trouble before he spun me around, put an arm around my chest, and brought the forearm with his Mark on it up to my forehead before I could stop him, and . . . Well, this was home sweet home, I guess. 

I looked over to my right and saw him standing there taking it all in. “You know this is weird, right? I’m sure there are some kind of boundaries you’re crossing by being here.” 

He glanced at me before he walked up to a big crack in one of the walls. “He’s been here?” 

“A couple of times. There used to be a hole in the wall between his side and mine back there, but Death fixed it.” 

Dean looked back at where I’d pointed. “So, he knows?” 

“Knows what?”

He looked around again and chose his words before saying, “Uh, that it’s in need of some repair.”

“It is repaired in some ways. The vines he didn’t like the first time he was in here are gone, but I’d say the cracks he saw then are still here with a lot more added because me dealing the vines probably shook this place to its core. The second time he was here was worse, because it was shaking like an earthquake the entire time, and then the walls came down.” 

Glancing back at me, he said, “When you died?” I nodded, and then he walked over to the other side of where Dean’s cave was. “Looks like there was a collapse. Death did it, or he did it?” 

Uh. “He said he thought Death did it.” 

Dean looked around when the ground shook and some dust landed on his head. “That you?” 

_No, it was my soul._

Dean walked back towards me and said, “You know what I think? I think he did it himself when he didn’t want you anymore during –“ The ground started shaking again, and he had to put his hand out to stop from toppling over. “That’s what I thought, uh, I won’t . . . I won’t do that to you.” I think he was a little surprised when the shaking got worse. “Okay, so you don’t want me. That’s fine, I can kick his ass and make him put the tunnel back.” Nope. Worse again. I decided to sit down against one of the walls to wait this out. “You wanna help me out here? What do you want?” 

I looked at my fingernails and calmly said, “My soul will let you know. It has a mind of its own. Probably shouldn’t have come here.” 

He gave me a frustrated look before focusing his attention back on the walls as he inched closer to me. “You’re gonna bring this whole thing down on top of us.” 

“I don’t have any control over this. My soul does whatever it wants when I’m in here. Just whatever you do, don’t go through the doors unless you put one of your boots in the way to stop the door from shutting, or you’ll get locked in and the way out is really hard to find. Plus, we’ll probably have to share a body when you finally do get out . . . Maybe you’re already sharing a soul with someone else, so that could get tricky.” 

He watched me to see if I was being serious before he shouted, “Sharing a soul? I’m not sharing a soul! We have the same damn soul, it’s –“

“Do you? Are you sure that where you were empy, he hasn’t been able to fill in the blanks and that you haven’t been able to do the same for him?”

“I just got his memories or he got mine, or I’m just me . . . or I don’t know what the fuck you’ve pulled me into –“

“Uh, you’re the one who signed on for this.”

“I didn’t! The demon me did!” Oh, that really pissed my soul off, so I shook my head in mock disappointment at him.

“How the hell are we supposed to get out of here?!”

“Let go of me out there? I don’t know. This is a new one for me.” 

Dean crouched down in front of me and said, “You did it first,” and I laughed. 

“No, I phoned you up Mark to Mark. I didn’t go shifting my consciousness to your soul and drag you into it with me.” 

He’d noticed the effect my laugh had on the earthquake and said, “I wanna try something.” 

“What –“ 

He leaned forward to plant his lips on mine, and the shaking got a whole lot worse. I thought he was going to stop, because a piece of ceiling landed next to us, but instead he brought his hand up to the crook of my neck and his tongue gently began caressing mine. The shaking went from bad to worse until he relaxed, settled in, and gave me his undivided attention. Then it started calming down, and then went quiet, and then the next thing I knew I was sitting up from the ground with a gasp and looked back behind me to see Dean still out on the ground. 

We must’ve both passed out. Why wasn’t he waking up? I gave him a little shove. “Get out of my soul.” Maybe 10 seconds later, his eyes flew open, and I was glad I hadn’t been hovering over him, because he would’ve cracked my nose with how fast he sat up. “What’d you get lost?” 

He rolled his eyes before he started getting to his feet. “Come on, we should go.” 

So, that was it? Disaster averted? Better check. “To November 1st, so you can be there for the 2nd?” 

He glanced at me again before slumped with a sigh. “Not right now . . . Need to find out if this is a branch or the trunk, but either way, I can’t promise anything the closer that day gets.” 

So it looked like I was going to have to be ready for anything for the next three months. I definitely hadn’t been expecting what he had planned though. When we pulled up outside the house where we were staying, I looked over my shoulder at him. “Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean your Mom will recognize you if she sees you.” 

His attention was on his old house down the street. “That’s why I’m gonna let you make the introductions. You can meet up with her during the day while I’m at work, get us in as the new neighbors, and then we’ll spring me on her once she gets to know you.” 

_No, that . . . there’s no way he wouldn’t remind her about Azazel’s deal coming due in a couple of months._ “But you’re going to tell her –“ 

“What? You’re not up for a good game?” 

_Game?_ It was tempting. No, this was too important. We were potentially playing for his Mom vs. my daughter. The stakes for both of us were way too high.

He grinned at the look on my face. “You mean to say this entire night hasn’t been one big game to you? Letting me think I was getting what I wanted, so I’d ask what you were planning, and then letting me know you’d get here before me to get me to back off before you stuck me in a room with black tar as your next move and got me distracted with that . . . Well, this my next move, and I owe you a few. Let’s see what you’ve got.”


	69. Making a Game Out of Living a Normal Life

Dean walked in the front door of his house with a grin. That’d gone way too well. First day here, and he already had a job with the old man as a mechanic. Started tomorrow. If Beth wouldn’t hold up her end of the deal and go see his Mom during the day, then he had it covered with his Dad. He had a look around the house and didn’t see her anywhere. His first thought was to go make sure she hadn’t taken off with the time spell stuff, so he was halfway up the stairs when she came in the door carrying a bunch of bags. “Where were you?” 

Throwing him an annoyed look, she walked past him towards the kitchen and said, “Well, if you’re insisting we look legit by doing things like paying for this place, then we can’t afford to buy take-out all the time.” 

She went grocery shopping? 

“Yeah, I did. I did live a normal life once. It’s been a long time, but I know how to balance a household budget, or I do for one. It’s probably harder for two.” 

Right. She just wanted him to think she was going to play along with things the way he’d said for now until she got him comfortable, and then she’d derail everything. She gave him a little smile to let him know that’s what she was doing, or that’s at least what she wanted him to think she was doing. Two could play at that game, so he went to go see what she bought and casually said, “Found a job.” 

She slumped a little. “Yeah? It’s not professional gambler is it, because if it is, then there’s no reason I –“

“Mechanic.” 

She stopped unpacking and turned to look at him. “With your Dad, I’m guessing.” He smirked, and she said, “You’re a snake. Now when you get us invited over there, it adds more validity to you being retired like your Mom or some bollocks like that.” She relaxed a little and added, “But it does mean I don’t have to randomly bump into her during the day, so –“ 

No way was she getting out of her side of this that easy. “What the hell else do you have to do around here all day?” 

She started taking things out of the bags again and answered, “I’m going to find my own job. It makes no sense for me to be here all day. Maybe it might if there were kids running around here, but there aren’t, and if you don’t want me to go out into the back yard and start doing target practice during the day, it’s probably better if I go find something better to do with my time than try to find the right 5-minute window to bump into your Mom.” 

Leaning on the counter next to Beth, he watched her and then said with a cocky grin, “You’re scared of her.” 

Beth exhaled abruptly before she looked at him, and then gave him her own smug smile. “Nope, but I think I’ll make sure I have to work evenings, and that’s my next move. Over to you.” 

The next day at work was all right actually. Nothing too hard, and there was just some light ‘new guy’ hazing. Seeing his Dad like this, as a normal guy, hanging out with the guys at work . . . it was going to take some getting used to. Towards the end of the day, Dean got invited to play poker back at the garage after hours, so that was a step in the right direction. Now he wasn’t sure whether or not he should go easy on them or not. He didn’t want to piss them all off and not get invited back, and he didn’t want his Dad to get pissed off and not invite him over, but he didn’t want to look weak either, cause that wouldn’t do him any favors.

He ran in the door and up the stairs, had a shower, got dressed, and headed back down, but stopped at the door. Looking over his shoulder towards the kitchen, he saw Beth looking busy . . . probably an act, which meant she’d probably been watching him to see what he’d do when he finally noticed the smell. He should keep going, but instead, when his mouth opened, he found himself asking, “What’d you make?” 

She looked towards the table, and he just sort of gravitated towards it. Steak and baked potato . . . Salad in a bowl in the middle of the table. He wouldn’t touch that, and she probably knew that, so that’s why it wasn’t on his plate. He wondered if the steak was cooked the right way. Probably. He gave her a suspicious look before he slowly sat down. What kind of a move was she making? “Where’d you get that?” 

She looked down at the oversized off the shoulder sweater she was wearing and said, “Well, I have to do something to fit in, and I’m not getting a perm or whatever the hell is popular right about now.” 

Whatever reason she got it, she looked good, and it didn’t look like she was wearing a bra, or at least he didn’t see a strap for one. “Thought you didn’t care about stuff like that.” 

She shrugged. “I wear an FBI suit when I go to the morgue. This is a job. Need to look the part, and I don’t care about my hair, but I’m not doing that to it . . . too permanent and too much fuss.” 

He was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, but most of his attention went onto the steak after his first bite. He didn’t know what she marinaded it in, but it was awesome, and she’d grilled it, so it had the right amount of chargrilled flavor to it. “Who taught you to cook?”

“Steak?”

He nodded, so she said, “Marco . . . He was one of the head cooks at our camp, and he showed me how when we were trying to use up what meat we could find before it went bad in the first weeks after the outbreak.”

He wondered if he should know that. “Did your guy –“ 

She shook her head. “He was out, and . . . it’s not like we had much of a chance to have steak after that . . . not yet. Our herd is still growing. Better eat up while you still can.”

Just had to rub in the fact that he was going to her cesspit of a universe when this was all over. But if her guy didn’t know she could cook steak like this, and he didn’t remember . . . did that mean it was his universe too, or did it mean that he just hadn’t cared enough about stuff like food when he was a demon, so he’d glanced over it without really remember it? 

To him, this whole him and the other Dean maybe being together was a shared memory thing. She seemed to have moved on from that and thought maybe his and her guy’s souls were overlapping and making a whole soul instead of two tattered and beaten down souls . . . if her guy was even with him. He didn’t know. He hadn’t felt like Rogue was his. Shouldn’t he feel like that if he were her Dad? Maybe not . . . Maybe that guy was hidden, and maybe while he was hidden, the guy in charge couldn’t remember stuff like that, kind of like when her Dean and the rest of them lived that life without remembering they’d lived it already. Her Dean hadn’t remembered Rogue then either . . . He didn’t like thinking about it, so he wasn’t going to do it now. Instead, he was going to enjoy what was left of his steak and go play poker with his Dad.

When he was done, he washed his plate, and was turning to head out again, when she said, “You don’t want your surprise?” 

_Here it comes._ He turned to tell her that whatever it was, she could give it to him later, but she was taking pie out of the oven and turned to hold it out to him saying, “Made this earlier.” 

It looked perfect. “Apple?” 

She nodded. “Three different types, just the right amount of cinnamon.” He didn’t know she could bake pie. Well, maybe he knew, but maybe he hadn’t cared enough about it when he was a demon to remember it? This was confusing. Was she trying to bring her Dean out, or trick him in some other way? Either way, that pie was his, and his eyes didn’t leave it while he walked back over to her and pointed his thumb over his shoulder saying, “It’s . . . there’s a –“   
“Wednesday night poker?” He nodded, so she said, “I know . . . Too bad I had to hear it from your Mom.” 

She’d talked to his Mom? “I, uh . . . didn’t know you were going to cook. Thought I’d make things easier and get something out.” 

Giving him a disbelieving smile, Beth said, “Sure . . . and just so you know, your Dad isn’t going, or at least he isn’t if your Mom has anything to say about it.” 

_What? No._ “What’d you do?” 

Beth flashed him a dazzling smile. “Oh, you know, when Mary came over to welcome me to the neighborhood after I got back from town, we had a nice chat, and I told her what I do to keep my husband from losing all our cash on poker. My guess is that it’ll work.” 

Well, if it’s what Beth was doing, he could see how it would. Hadn’t really thought she could sell sex the way she was, but she sure as hell could without doing much at all. The set up had been perfect with the dinner. Her hair was a tousled kind of sexy she maybe hadn’t even had to do anything with to get it to look the way it did, but it really complimented what she was wearing . . . he had to fight with himself not to kiss her neck and collarbone and maybe – No stop it . . . Now that she’d lured him into her web with the pie, it’s like she was oozing sex appeal.

“Thought we agreed, I’m not really . . . You know it’s a con. I’m not . . . I’m not really your husband.” 

Beth licked her lips and said, “Yeah, but it’s what you want her to think, and you want me to sell it don’t you?” 

He gave her a half nod while he watched her lips. Sell it to his Mom or sell it to him, because the demon him might’ve been all over that, and God had he been all over that in ways Dean couldn’t get out of his head, but he was trying to . . . he didn’t know what the hell he was trying to do. Keep his distance until he got them both leveled out from their respective tailspins? He didn’t know why. It seemed like the right thing to do after what happened in her soul? 

She slipped the pie behind her back to put it on the counter, and he filled the void between them. His hands went to either side of her on the counter. He was thinking he’d toy with her some before reaching behind her to take the pie and walk off with it when she least expected it, but she said, “Oh, and I got a job today in Topeka.” His gaze went from her lips up to her eyes, and she gave him one hell of a sexy smile before saying, “Paging Nurse Van Halen . . . I was thinking of playing doctor, but dressing up like a nurse worked more to my advantage,” before she licked her lips again gave the lower one a little bite and added, “For the evening hours . . . have fun with the pie.” Then she ducked out from under one of his arms and headed for the door. “I found a hunt. Don’t wait up.” 

_What the hell just happened?_ He looked at the pie and then at the front door closing behind her. _A hunt?_ She couldn’t wear what she was wearing on a hunt. He went to follow her out, but by the time he got to the door, she was pulling out of the driveway in the car she’d stolen for herself. Got a job, went shopping for new clothes, made a pie and dinner, talked to his Mom, and found a hunt . . . if that’s really where she was going. How the hell did she do that all in one day? Maybe it was better for her to get a job, so she didn’t have so much free time on her hands. Well, if she was going on a hunt, he was going to play poker. 

He got back around 11. That was way too early, but everyone had to get up and go to work tomorrow, including him. His Dad hadn’t showed up. Dean didn’t even want to think about what that meant.

He went to the kitchen and grabbed another slice of pie. He’d tried it before he went out, and damn if it wasn’t as good now as he remembered it being earlier. _Now what?_ Might as well grab a beer, finish off the pie, and see what was on TV. 

Waking with a start, he saw there was nothing but static on the TV, and then realized what had woken him up was Beth sneaking back in through the front door, so he thought he’d let her know he’d caught her. “What was it?” 

She paused with her foot on the bottom step and said, “Nothing major, just a spirit.” 

Looking at his watch, he got up and went to turn off the TV. “What took so long?” 

“Takes a while to dig a grave solo and not get killed when the spirit tries to stop you.” She looked okay. Wouldn’t have thought she’d been digging up a grave at all.

Dean put his arm out to block her from going up the stairs. “Let me ask you something . . . How’d you find the hunt, research it, and find the right grave in one day?” She turned to face him and leaned back against the wall, and now all he could think about was taking her against the wall, but he still forced himself to keep it on topic. “You used the time spell?” 

“Or I’ve been around for a long time, and there have been cases that have stuck out to me that never get addressed, so I took care of one.” 

Taking a step closer, he leaned down to quietly say into her ear. “Or you didn’t go on a hunt at all. There’s no way you come back from hunts looking this good.” 

He was hitting on her using every tool in his arsenal, mostly as revenge for earlier, but when he leaned back to look at her, what he wasn’t expecting was for her to look timid in an alluring way as she said, “You’re right. I went to a bar on the other side of the state where nobody knows my husband. He lost all our money on poker tonight, and I had to earn it back somehow. You want me to show you what I did? You could tell me if I charged enough for services provided.” 

God, she was good. Part of him thought the demon him had created a monster, and most of him wanted to play along. Then she leaned forward and stopped just shy of his lips before she whispered, “You wanted to play? You’d better up your game, Winchester,” and ducked under his arm to go upstairs. Sonofabitch! He clenched his fist in frustration at her back and then followed her upstairs. He’d come up with something to do tomorrow. He had the rest of the night to think about it now.

“Hey, my wife says she met your wife yesterday.” 

Dean looked up from the engine he was working on and saw his Dad standing there. _Here goes. Dinner invite._ “Yeah, I think Beth might’ve mentioned something about that.” 

His Dad took a look at what Dean had done so far and said, “Tell her that Mary and I would like to have you two over for dinner sometime soon.” Score one for him . . . Or it was until his Dad asked, “How long you been married?” 

Focusing on the carburetor, Dean answered, “Not long.” 

“I heard you showed up here last night . . . Word of advice, never turn your wife down. You don’t know when it’ll happen again, and this early on, it sets a bad precedent.” 

Dean really didn’t want to talk about this for a whole hell of a lot of reasons and focused all his attention on the car. _Oh, God, is our dinner invite a thanks for sex?_ Score one for Beth, cause they weren’t going if it was for that. “It doesn’t bother you getting played like that?” 

His Dad surprised him by laughing. “Are you kidding me? She’s happy. I’m happy. Sure beats the hell out of having a fight about it.” 

Dean shrugged. “We don’t fight. She nags me sometimes about doing the right thing, and then she’ll find a way to distract me from what I want to do, so she can get her way.” 

His Dad shook his head and said, “She may not be mad at you right away, but you turning up here last night . . . It’s coming, and when it does . . . just remember to never say something you can’t take back. If you do, it’ll keep coming up again and again. She’ll never forget it . . . The making up part’s not so bad though.” Oh God. He definitely didn’t need to hear that.


	70. Miserable and Alone

“What do you mean we can’t go tomorrow?” 

“You can go on your own. I start work tomorrow afternoon and won’t be back until late.”

Dean threw me a look and asked, “Well, when’s your next day off?” 

I smiled. “Wednesday.” _That’s right. John’s not going to give up poker two weeks in a row for dinner plans with a guy he can just see at poker night._

He looked annoyed, and then something else dawned on him. “What the hell am I supposed to do while you’re working?” 

I might’ve giggled a little at his new predicament. I couldn’t help it. It’s what I’d had to figure out for the last couple of days while he was working. “Come up with new recipes?” 

He grinned and said, “If you’re working, then we can afford a damn pizza.” 

_Yeah. Okay._ I watched him for a few seconds, and he looked . . . content maybe? “Why are you doing this?” 

He glanced at me to see if I’d meant what he thought I did before he went back to his dinner. “Told you. This is my move.” 

_Right. The game._ “So, you get to know them as friends and co-workers, and on the night . . . it’ll still happen. Either because of Fate or me . . . Why put yourself through this?” 

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Are you –“ 

“When’s your next night off after that?” 

I got up to put my stuff in the sink and said, “Thursday . . . if it makes you happy, you can get into gardening or something, or you could go on –“ 

“Not going on a hunt. I’m gonna do this right.” 

_Okay. Whatever that meant._

“Look, it’s my lesson to learn. This is the way I’m doing it. So, just back off.” 

I leaned across the table to make him look at me and said, “If you don’t want to hear what I’m thinking, then stop listening,” before I went into the other room, and a few minutes later, he left saying that he was going out and not to wait up, so I didn’t. He was already gone when I got up, or maybe he never came home? 

On my way to the hospital, I brought him lunch in case he didn’t come home and therefore hadn’t made anything for lunch that morning, and the first thing he said when I walked in was, “What are you doing here?” 

_I have pre-work jitters, so I feel antsy?_ “I brought you – “ He snatched the bag out of my hand and told me to go. 

“Am I like an embarrassing Mom at school right now?” 

Relaxing a little, he smiled briefly. “Something like that.” 

That’s when I saw John. He was a sight for sore eyes. He came over with a big grin to shake my hand and said, “You must be Beth,” in a voice, I knew so well. 

“I take it you’re John. I’ve heard a lot of good things about you. It’s nice to finally meet. I, uh, better get going . . . I’m starting work in about half an hour. Don’t want to be late on my first day.” 

Mostly, I just didn’t want to start tearing up in front of him. I had no idea how Dean could do this. I was on my way back to my car and stopped when I heard Dean call after me. “What the hell was that?” 

“I didn’t know how much I missed him until I saw him again.” 

“Missed him? You didn’t know –“ 

_Screw you not my Dean half._ “I may not have been raised with you, but I knew John Winchester. He was my mentor and friend. We played games all the time . . . You wanna know . . . You wanna know something you could do that would be a good ‘in’ with the normal John Winchester? Pick up a strategic board game to take to their house next week. I’ve gotta go. I’m going to be late.” 

Turns out being a nurse isn’t nearly as glamorous as it sounds. Once the paperwork was done, and the actual work started, it wouldn’t have been so bad, because you’re always busy, but you had to deal with people face-to-face a lot. I should’ve stuck with pretending to be a doctor or better yet, a pathologist. The last half of the day was okay, because I got put up on the pediatrics floor. I think I was going to try and get up there as often as possible. 

I liked the kids. I liked the parents. It was a hell of a lot better than the ER. I checked the schedule on my way out, and I was a float right now, so I was up there again all day tomorrow and all day Monday too, which meant that I was in the ER over the weekend. Maybe if I did a really good job up there, that’s where they’d decide to keep me? 

I didn’t see Dean that night, or the next morning, and I felt like I was being punished for questioning him about what we were doing here 2 freaking days ago. I didn’t let myself dwell on it too much, or I’d probably go off the deep end now that the rest of my family wasn’t here. I missed my Cas. I missed my Dad. I missed my daughter, and I missed my Dean. I couldn’t think about whether or not I missed the good times with my Sam.

I threw myself into my work, and by the end of the next day, I didn’t particularly care about any of Dean’s stuff with his parents and him giving me the silent treatment anymore. Mostly, I was upset because a kid who’d been admitted in the morning and was all smiley when I got there, crashed at the end of the shift, and the doctors couldn’t bring her back. I just had to stand there and watch it happen. 2nd day, and I didn’t want to do this job anymore. 

_Maybe I should’ve just gotten a job at the university. I shouldn’t be trying to save people’s lives in the past. That’s a big ‘no no,’ isn’t it? Is it? Is it really what we’re supposed to be learning, or is this a job, just like all the other universes? Maybe I should just stay at the house all day and do nothing, so I don’t change anything. What if this is why Dean was sent away? What if he was punished for killing another me, who was innocent, but crazy, and I’d been fucking a demon, thinking it was him until I went and got myself kicked off the team too? Or worse . . . what if my Dean was the demon, and he went away after they cured him?_

“What do you want me to do, Chuck? I don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to be doing? Where’s my daughter?” I waited for some kind of an answer and shook my head before I got out of the car and headed for the house. 

Alone again. Well, that suited me just fine. I went to one of the cupboards, grabbed the bottle of vodka I’d picked up shopping the other day, and went out the back to smoke. Chuck and I were going to have a conversation. He may not answer, but he couldn’t shut me off. I knew that much. 

“Rough day?” 

I don’t know how long I’d been out there, but apparently I wasn’t as alone as I’d thought. “Go away. I’m talking to Chuck.” 

“I know . . . right under my window.” 

“Take my room. I’m not done yet. Window shouldn’t be open anyway. It’s not safe.” 

Looking at the back porch light, he said, “Wasn’t open until the light came on.” 

_Nosey._ “Well, then shut the light off and close your window on your way back to bed.” 

Instead of doing that, he came over and sat on the step next to the lawn chair I was lounging in. “You wanna talk about it?” 

Lighting another cigarette, I shook my head. “I am . . . I know Chuck can hear me. The direct line isn’t broken, so he has to listen even if he doesn’t answer.” 

Dean looked out into the backyard and asked, “Does he usually make tornados happen on command?” 

Even if he wasn’t my Dean, he should know this from when he was a demon, but apparently he didn’t. I looked sadly out into the backyard that wouldn’t get destroyed no matter what I said to Chuck and sighed. “Yeah, and turns rain into blood and makes earthquakes knock down walls or lightning that kills demons or pinball lightning that kills vampires or hurricane blizzards inside a 100 mile snow globe . . . and now not even a snowflake in August or a tumbleweed rolling through.” 

“You lost a kid today?” 

I kept watching the backyard for signs of some kind of natural disaster and nodded slowly before saying, “Desiree . . . She was very sick, but happy when I got there and dead by the time I left . . . kidney failure, so there’s not much they could do. I’ve lost a lot of kids . . . Andrea was one of my favorites, so she’s the favorite one I lost . . . Corey was the hardest because I had to kill him myself . . . And then there were the ones that you’d find frozen and huddled together in a house, like they’d been trying to stay warm and just couldn’t hold out any longer . . . They were already dead, so I didn’t know them, but it wasn’t easy . . . It made me think things, like, ‘What if I’d showed up a couple of days ago’ or ‘How many others are out there that I won’t find in time either,’ so I had to focus on the ones I did find to keep going even though only 0.1% of the places we searched ever had anyone alive in them . . . only 1% of the places we searched even had any people in them at all, alive or dead . . . The rest are empty . . . maybe because the families that lived in them were turned into Croats and went somewhere else or maybe because the demons rounded them up and either took them to Crowley or Las Vegas . . . maybe because other people have come along and forced them to be slaves as ‘get out of jail free cards’ if they ever need one, or as something to trade for guns and ammo . . . Kids used to outnumber the adults by a lot because the adults who died at the very start died trying to give the kids a chance, but now . . . It’s like 3000 to 7000 in favor of adults. Nearly everyone you find is an adult . . . Think the last kid we found was a little girl about to be sold to some men for guns, and she’d been sold around a lot before that . . . The little boy we found before that . . . he’d been sold around a lot too . . . before that, there were kids in New York . . . maybe 20 or 30 of them that survived by tricking other small kids into hiding in changeling lairs under the city . . . I didn’t see the body count myself, but they led hundreds, thousands to their deaths . . . and I understand it . . . to these 8, 9, and 10 year olds . . . here are these monsters willing to protect them and feed them if they get other kids to die in their place . . . But I think I hate them a little. Not as much as I hate the adults who have done and are still doing the same thing, and I shouldn’t hate the adults, because I’m responsible for punishing them, so I have to be impartial, and I guess I am . . . If I weren’t I’d kill all of them instead of trying to teach them a lesson and giving them the chance to become better . . . And then there’s Desiree. She was 9 . . . and despite the fact that she was dying, Desiree was all smiles just like Sarah . . . I could save Sarah . . . Even after she spent 2 weeks with a starving vampire nest, I could save her, and Sarah is gentle and hopeful and kind, and she’ll never be a hunter, but she’ll grow up to be good and the kind of person who makes you want to keep fighting, and I think Desiree would have been like that too.” 

I wiped the two or three tears I’d lost off my cheek, and Dean reached for my bottle, like he wanted some, so I handed it to him, and I think he was expecting there to be more gone than there was. I’d only had about 5 or 6 shots. I wasn’t drunk. That’s the real reason he took it. He’d thought I’d had enough. 

“I have to get up tomorrow and do it all over again unless Chuck lets me know I shouldn’t because I’m actually causing some kind of a cosmic cataclysm with my new job. But I don’t think it really matters what I do here. Think I’m here to be more of a witness . . . Desiree would’ve died whether I’d been there or not. Can’t save everyone . . . you pick the kids closer to home, and kids in trading posts are dying. You pick hunting instead of becoming a doctor or fire fighter and other kids are dying. You pick getting out of Heaven, because you know the location of 10 tablets that when put together can kill God, and billions are dying, but if you’d stayed in Heaven, then everyone that has ever lived or died in your universe goes away and can’t be replaced.” 

Looking up at the sky, I added, “You hear that Chuck? Message received loud and clear. Can’t save everyone . . . I already know. I’ve learned it over and over again. I’m still not sorry we moved Abaddon’s head instead of letting them kill Oskar or letting that Dean keep the Mark. It was a well played move, and by the way, how many people are going to die because of the Sam and Deans we brought with us that didn’t stick around to do the hunts they should’ve done in their universes, and this . . . this is what you flake out on?”

Dean got my attention and said, “Do you really think insulting him is going to get him to start listening now, cause I’ve been trying that for years, and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere.” 

I looked back up at the sky and answered, “Well, if he didn’t want to be insulted without being able to shut it off, then he shouldn’t have given his Mark to someone who was going to call him an asshole.” 

Dean got my attention again, and I thought he was going to hand me back my bottle, but when I reached for it, he pulled it away. “Not a chance. Think you’re done for the night.” 

I waved him off, saying, “I’ve only had like 5 or 6 shots, but fine. You take it,” before I went back to watching for a sign in my backyard to let me know that we were going to get out of here, or I did until Dean blocked my view, because apparently he’d decided that he didn’t want to wait anymore and was just going to pick me up and carry me into the house. 

“Put me down. I’m not done yet.” 

Dean turned with me to look at the yard and said, “I think you got your answer for today. You can yell at him again tomorrow.” 

_I don’t want to yell at him tomorrow. I want to yell at him now._

“Yeah, but you sound like a crazy person.” 

_No, I don’t. I wasn’t actually yelling. And even if I was, who cares?_


	71. Total Honesty

Dean watched Beth walk out the door to go to work and shook his head. Maybe he’d been wrong about this. It didn’t matter how much she wanted to win this game, she couldn’t play normal for longer than the first couple of days, and even then she’d gone on a hunt the second night . . . He’d thought he was hard to domesticate. It really wasn’t for her at all. Neither was giving her space. Well, maybe that was working for her. He wouldn’t know. He barely saw her. It wasn’t working for him. 

He felt like they were living separate lives in the same house. All he was really doing was working and becoming a local at the nearest bar. Things had gone downhill as soon as he started putting his new plan into action, but he’d had to do something. Didn’t matter what she wore or whether he was annoyed with her, and it didn’t matter how much he was trying not to think about any part of when he was with her as a demon. He wanted to rip her clothes off and throw her into the nearest wall or on a table or counter or chair or set of stairs or floor or just about anywhere. 

Why wasn’t he doing that? He’d tried really hard to understand what her soul was telling him when he was in there, and after she’d left, he’d told her soul that he’d make sure he helped her feel calm the way she’d helped him feel calm when he was a demon, so the walls wouldn’t keep crumbling. That had to be bad if she died when they fell down. He’d told the walls that as soon he helped her find that peace, he’d make sure she knew he wanted her the same way the demon had. He’d told her he’d keep the promises the demon had, and he would, but he wanted to get this right, because he wasn’t going to leave her, and it wasn’t because he wanted to protect her or make her feel better about herself. He genuinely wanted her for him. 

Maybe it was selfish, but he didn’t really care. He was a ticking time bomb with this mark on his arm. Maybe she was that lighthouse he needed to find his way out of the darkness, but mostly she just made him feel good . . . when he was talking to her or around her, not watching her run out the door to go to work on his day off . . . and maybe not when she was talking about kids dying. That mostly made him feel more things for her, a lot more things for her. So did her doing nice things for him, like bringing him lunch, and the last thing he wanted was for the guys at work, and especially his Dad, to think she was hot and start talking about it. It was already a struggle to keep from knocking out a couple of them that talked about his Mom when his Dad wasn’t around. 

Looking around the house, he tried to come up with something to do. Mow the lawn? It was fine the first couple of times as a novelty thing, but after awhile, it lost its appeal. It’d give him something to do, so he did it and then he trimmed the edges and was going to do something with the hedges, but maybe he should leave that for tomorrow? He went in and took a shower and was trying to come up with something else to do when someone knocked on the door. 

After checking to see who it was first, he took his hand off the handgun Beth had given him, but he wasn’t sure about opening the door. The person started to go, and his hand did it’s own thing and pulled the door open. “Oh, good someone is –“ His Mom stopped as soon as she turned and saw him. “You –“ 

Putting his hand up to stop her, Dean said, “Not sure what you’re doing here, but I’m trying to get out, so if you could go, that’d be good,” and then he closed the door and waited.

There was another knock on the door a minute later, and he smiled before he adopted more of a serious look and opened the door again. “What?” 

His Mom used her foot to move the rug covering a devil’s trap at the door, made a point of letting him know she knew he had a gun by looking around him, and said, “If you’re trying to get out, then you need to do a better job of it. Does your wife know?“ 

She walked past him, and he had to hide his smile again. “How do you know Beth?” 

Turning to look at him, his Mom answered, “I’m Mary Winchester now. I live in the house two doors down and across the street. You work with my husband, John. We have two children. He doesn’t know about me being a hunter. Does your wife know?” 

Dean closed the door and said, “Beth’s a hunter too. She’s the reason I’m trying to get out, but she’s struggling with all of this . . . Can’t get her to stop going on hunts. Figure if I show her I can be normal, she’ll think she can be too, and if I give her space, then –“ 

“Give her space? You want her to give up who she is, and you want her to do it on her own?” 

“Wait, are you saying that being a hunter is who you are, because –“ 

His Mom turned to walk into the living room and asked, “How long has she been a hunter?” Guess he was supposed to follow? 

“In one way or another, her whole life, same as me.” 

Sitting on his couch, his Mom said, “Then it’s who she is. It’s who you are. It’s who I am . . . No matter how hard I try, I can’t get it completely out of my system . . . If –“ 

Dean sat next to her and said, “You still hunt?” 

“Not often . . . if I can be there and back before John notices . . . and sometimes if we have a bad enough fight that he’s gone for a couple of days, it’s the only way to blow off steam.” Well, he wasn’t expecting that. Mostly, he’d thought he and Beth could find out from her how to be normal, because he hadn’t been able to give it up when he was with Lisa either.

His Mom must’ve seen that he was a little disappointed, because she gave him a reassuring smile and said, “I bet it helps that you don’t have to hide it from each other. If I started putting devil’s traps up in the house, John would probably have me committed.” 

Well, it wasn’t easy to retire even with another hunter. “To tell you the truth, I was glad when she got a job, so she couldn’t spend all day looking for a hunt and take off without me at night anymore, but now I hardly ever see her . . . and there’s no way she’d agree to live anywhere that wasn’t locked down like Fort Knox. She’s got wards up in places I don’t even know about . . . probably haven’t even seen half of them before in my life . . . and she almost never forgets them. Glad she did the night she met me . . . I was possessed at the time . . . seems like I was supposed to meet her . . . like it was Fate, and usually I say screw destiny, but I think that is one time I’m all right with it getting its way.” 

“What about the other times?” Dean looked over at his Mom, and she said, “You said almost, not never. What about the other times she forgot?” 

Like when Jess died would be one example he could think of off the top of his head. Some of the things he remembered about her were hit and miss, but he remembered that Beth was there when Jess got killed in one of her lives. Just so happened that it was the same way his Mom was killed. He took a deep breath and said, “Just one other time that I know about, and she didn’t forget. Think that was destiny too, but the wrong kind. Doesn’t bother you that you’re house isn’t protected?” 

Mary smiled. “Who says it isn’t? I just don’t leave it out in the open for everyone to see.” 

_Well, then what the hell went wrong?_ He’d figure it out. He kept wavering on what to do. Beth’s sincere little speeches weren’t helping. Like the one about no matter what choice you made, people were going to die. Those kids she’d lost and the ones she’d saved were important to her. The people she’d saved in that do-over universe were important to her too. There were people in all these timelines that would be saved and others that would die because of the choice the other versions of him had made to leave their universes. 

He’d been demon when he made that decision, so he really hadn’t cared about any of that. Mostly, he’d just wanted to find a way to get Beth to be his partner, but what about the rest of them? Like when he thought about the Boy Scout and his brother, Dean thought about all the hunts he’d been on since he was in Purgatory. All those two would’ve had to do was make sure that Sam didn’t try to do the trials and that the Boy Scout didn’t get the Mark, and they could’ve kept hunting and saved more people. 

Dean thought the same thing when he thought about the solo-Dean. There’d been a lot of hunts he’d been on since he got the Mark. For instance, Abaddon was still running around in the solo-Dean’s universe, and Metatron was still a real problem, so were the angels Metatron kicked out of Heaven, and what about the normal everyday hunts that wouldn’t get done there now. Looking at his Mom sitting next to him now, he had a lot to think about. 

“So, why’d you come over? Were you looking for Beth?” 

His Mom relaxed a little more. “Yeah, I just wanted to find out if it was okay if we changed the dinner plans to Wednesday.” 

Wow. His Mom really didn’t want his Dad playing poker. “Yeah, sure, that’s fine. Beth said something about maybe bringing a game? You think –“ 

Smiling, and with some enthusiasm, his Mom answered, “That’s perfect. John loves a good game.” 

“Any suggestions?” 

“One of those world conquest games? I know they take a while, but it just might do the trick.” 

_Guess Beth was right about that._ “Just to let you know, Beth cheats.” That was another thing about her that the demon in him had approved of whole-heartedly. 

His Mom smiled as she got to her feet and said, “So does John. It should make for an interesting game.” Yeah, it should if Beth could keep from looking like her dog died every time she saw his Dad. 

\---------------------  
Dean watched his Dad and Beth squabbling over the game and laughed before he glanced at his Mom. She seemed to be enjoying it too, but it was getting late. “Beth, think maybe we should think about going.” 

She and his Dad both turned to give him the same exact look, like he should’ve kept his mouth shut, and he laughed again. “What? It’s late. Some of us have to work tomorrow.” 

Beth slumped before she looked at his Dad. “Fine. It’s a draw for now, but you’d better clear your schedule for Sunday, so I have enough time to beat you.” 

His Dad laughed before he looked at his Mom to see if she was up for it, and Dean said, “Yeah, we were already going to have you guys over for dinner. You could come over early and make a day of it. I’ll cook.” 

His Dad started to say something about having second thoughts if Dean was cooking, and while Beth stood up, she decided to set him straight. “Trust me . . . It’ll be worth it. Thanks for having us over, John . . . Mary. It’s been fun.” 

On the walk back to their house, Dean glanced at Beth. “How do you know I can cook? Just because the guy you know can doesn’t mean I can.” 

“It’s a natural talent . . . You were born with it. The little boy sleeping in that house back there will grow up being an amazing cook no matter what his life is like, the same way he’ll grow up having a great memory and being able to hit a bullseye with any weapon, understand the inner workings of a machine, get around any security system, or beat anyone at pool.” 

Nah, he could only do those things because of the life he’d had. “You make it sound like I was born to be a hunter.” 

“Or a spy. I’m pretty sure 007 could cook.” 

Giving her an unsure smile, Dean asked, “What about you? If not hunting, then what?” 

Looking up at the stars, Beth answered, “Oh, I know I was born to be a spy . . . Breaking and entering is my number one talent. I have the ability to pick up other languages, find secrets on the enemy, and not give into torture tactics . . . International thief isn’t fulfilling, because it isn’t for the greater good . . . definitely born to be a spy. I knew it the first time I saw Mission Impossible from up there.” 

While she unlocked the door, he asked, “What about science and medicine?” 

She looked back at him while she pushed the door open. “That’s my cover. Every spy needs a believable cover.” 

As soon as he shut the door behind him, he hooked an arm around her waist to keep her from walking away and then gently turned her, so he could put her between him and the wall. “So, you’re a spy, not a hunter?” 

She could’ve easily turned it into a spies role-play thing, but that’s not what he was trying to do. He really wanted to know if that’s how she saw herself, and she must’ve known that, because even though she looked a little timid with her nod, it was genuine and not something she was trying to do to mess with him. 

“But not anymore right? You have to save people from the evil you know is out there, but turning it into a spy game is what makes you feel calm about it, and it was okay in your universe, because you could be you and do things, like bring down Sam’s camp or wipe out a Vamp Army, but when you woke up again in the do-over life and in this universe and any of the others that haven’t been destroyed . . . you’re just going through the motions trying to save who you can, but it’s not the same . . . plus, there aren’t any battles, and as much as you like the strategy, you like not having to think and just acting in the moment too . . . the battles are like a vacation for you.”

She hesitantly nodded again, and that’s the look he wanted. It was totally vulnerable, like he was saying something that she didn’t think anyone else knew. If she was going to be like that with anyone, he wanted it to be him. “I’m not the only one who gets it. Your Dad does too and maybe Cas . . . maybe your Dean at the end too, but everyone else thinks you’re chaotic and always running off on crazy kamikaze missions. What they don’t understand is that when you needed to be protected, there was nobody there, so you learned to do it yourself, and this is how. It’s the only way you know how to get any control in your life. That’s why it makes you feel calm. 

You don’t need anyone trying to stop you from doing anything for your own good or making your decisions for you on anything . . . You need someone who will do those things with you, and if you need to go off on one of your solo missions, then you need to know that you have someone to come home to when you do, someone who will miss you while you’re gone and who isn’t going to give you a hard time about it, and who’ll mostly wish he was there when you tell him how awesome it was . . . and take the control you give him in the bedroom and do something good with it.” 

She smiled, and he said, “And I don’t know how long we’re going to be here. I don’t know if this is supposed to be a lesson for me, and you’re supposed my conscience, or if we’re here to learn something else. Maybe we’re working a job, or maybe we’re in time out. I don’t know, but for as long as we’re here, I want you to do what ever you want. If you want go out on the road, or if you want to stay here and help me try to spy on my parents, or whatever it is that makes you feel calm, then do it. That’s what I’m trying to do, so I can control this.” 

Looking at his forearm, Dean added, “If I even say Azazel, I can feel it wake up, and I know it’s boring and maybe it’s a bad idea to live across the freaking road from them, but if I want to keep it under control with Sam gone, then right now I can’t hunt, and I need to be around my parents . . . at first I thought maybe it was so I could be close when the time comes, so I could try to stop it, and so I could get to know them as normal people, and then I think maybe I wanted to see how Mom does the whole normal thing, but she still hunts on the side without Dad knowing, and now, I don’t know . . . I need to learn how to do this with you, so I figure I can learn it from them . . . They’ve both given me some pretty good advice that I don’t really need yet, but I probably will . . . and I still want to save Mom, and it should be the right thing, but I don’t know if it is. I’ll still try, because I can’t just sit back and do nothing. I wouldn’t do that for anybody whether I knew the person or not. And I know it’ll still probably happen no matter what I do, but right now . . . this is what I need.”


	72. Out of Control

“Okay. But I want to try something tomorrow, so we can find out if we’re actually on the main trunk.” 

Watching me, Dean asked, “So, you know if I stop it, whether we’ll all be erased?” 

“Yeah.” I couldn’t trade Rogue for his Mom. Rogue deserved to have a life, and it’s not that Mary didn’t or that I held anything against her. I was actually glad she’d chosen to save John and had Dean and Sam, but Mary had made her choices. Rogue had no choice in this. It was my job to protect her. 

Responding to what I was thinking Dean asked, “You really believe she’ll disappear if this is the main trunk?” I nodded, and Dean slumped. “So, how do we do this?” 

Try something and hope for the best, really. “Time spell. I’m not entirely sure if it’ll work . . . I’ve never gone forward in time with it, just back to my own time. We seem to be jumping around to different times in each branch, so maybe more of the future is written than we think, and that’s why it’s so hard to change it, but maybe there will still be subtle differences between that show I watched and the future in this branch . . . That’s what I want to find. I’m just really searching for something to get through to you or put my mind at ease that you won’t take my daughter from me, so I don’t have to go to war with you.” 

Taking half a step back, Dean looked a little confused. “How’d we go from me telling you that I want to do this husband and wife thing for real with you and being honest with you about where my head is at right now to you threatening me?” 

_He wanted to do the husband and wife thing for real? And what did he mean threatening?_ “I’m not threatening you. I’m telling you the same thing I have been since we got here. I don’t want you to forget it in all of this pretend happy families thing you’ve got going on right now . . . Protecting Rogue, even from you, is my number one priority. I may suck at the rest of it, but I can do that. You want advice on it? Go ask your Mom and see what she’d do to protect you and Sam if it was your Dad she had to protect you from.” 

“I’m not her –“ 

_Oh, give me a fucking break._ “Well, it took your DNA to make Rogue. Might as well think of her as the product of a one-night stand you don’t remember. Why do you think the rest of them are the way they are around her?” 

“So, we’ll make more . . . ones that I can–“ 

“Jesus Christ, Dean! I understand that maybe you’re having a hard time adjusting to all of this. You probably can’t even really grasp that I’m real, she’s real, the other Sam and Dean Winchesters out there are real, and that your parents are really living down the street from us, but this isn’t a dream. We’re all real. Rogue is real even though you only ever saw her through the eyes of a demon or maybe her fathers eyes if he’s anywhere in there at all, which I’m beginning to doubt more by the day . . . And if this is the trunk of the tree, and you get your way . . . that would mean that you and I would be erased right along with my daughter, so there would be no more kids . . . But if that weren’t happening, I’m not having anymore kids. Having her almost killed me, and I do the best I can with her, but it’s a struggle. It wouldn’t be fair to her or any others I might have . . . And if we’re stuck here forever, I’m still not having anymore kids . . . I won’t just replace her . . . She’s one of a kind. Be ready at 7, or I’m leaving without you, and you’ll just have to take my word on what I find.” Then I stomped upstairs and went to my room, so I could start making plans on what to do if our trip tomorrow didn’t work.

He wasn’t talking to me, and he was throwing me all kinds of dark looks, but he was there in my room at 1 minute to 7 the next morning. Whatever peace he’d been trying to find had been thrown right out the window. _This should be fun._

I made sure my weapons bag was with me just in case. I had stuff like my toothbrush, but I didn’t need my clothes bag. We’d only be there for 24 hours and then do the timespell at 7:01 tomorrow morning, so it’d be like we never left. _Where should we go? How about we try the same date in August in . . . 2010? Should be late enough to see whether or not things were different in this universe and not so late that we’d risk running into Amara._

I said the spell and thought about the 13th of August 2010, and then as I looked around what used to be my room, my hand slowly went into my bag, so I could grab my angel blade and sheath. Going to one of the broken out windows, Dean asked, “Where the hell did you take us?” 

Getting to my feet, I started strapping my angel blade around my leg. “Well, think of it this way. It looks like you got your wish and saved your Mom.” He threw me a disgusted look as I grabbed my favorite handgun and strapped that one around my waist while I came over to look out the window. “Yeah, looks to me like nobody raised you or Sam around hunting . . . nobody prepared you for things you still would’ve faced, whether she was alive or not, but maybe I’m wrong.” 

Turning away from the abysmal scene that made my universe look downright cheery, I went back to grab my bag. Looked like it was time to explore and see if my theory was correct. “Seriously, where the hell are we, Beth?” 

“August 13, 2010, a few months after Sam should’ve gone in the cage, and if he didn’t, then we’re pretty much at ground zero for the Apocalypse.” 

As I picked up my bag, Dean came back over to me. “Alright, I get it. Take us back.” 

_Is he kidding? No way am I missing out on a chance to see what’s out there._ “I haven’t seen what this kind of an Apocalypse is like . . . I’ve seen what Pestilence has to offer in the way of the Croat virus, but that on top of the other 3 Horsemen running amok at the behest of Lucifer, who is probably in his vessel, fighting or having fought Michael, who is also probably in his vessel? Any people left really need help . . . You stay here and not kill anything. I’m going to have a look around to see if I can find out how this happened.“ 

_What? Why does he look like he’s about to hunt me?_

“Because I might.” 

_Why?_

He came right up to me, pointed back at where I’d done the time spell, and gave me a direct order to take us back. 

_No. I want to explore and see if I can find –_

“Take us back. Now.” 

I searched my weapons bag, handed him the piece of paper with the spell on it, gave him a spare bag with all the ingredients, and told an even angrier him to take himself back. Then I left the room to try and figure out how to get outside when the other half of the house, including the stairs, had been blown up the way most of the street had been. 

I was in the middle of testing my weight on the rope I had around the splintered banister when Dean came to the top of the stairs, pulled me up, and dragged me back into the other room. “What are you –“ 

That’s all I got out before we were standing in my room in 1983 again. He let go of my arm and turned to storm out of my room, and that was fine. I had more time spell ingredients. I’d just go back as soon as – 

Turning back around, Dean started trying to take my time spell stuff off of me and shoved me into a corner between the wardrobe, but I wouldn’t give it up. “What are you doing? I thought – “ 

He finally yelled, “Do you really not know what you just did, or are you that stupid?” 

Looking at the spot on the floor where I’d done the spell, I replied, “I made a pretty compelling case, but for all you know, I could’ve been wrong, and it had nothing to do with your Mom. That’s why you should’ve let me –“ 

_What’s with the death looks?_

“There’s no way I was leaving you there!” 

“Why not? I would’ve been back in 2 seconds as far as you were concerned if –“ 

Letting me go, Dean turned away from me again and spat out, “2 seconds for me . . . if you came back, but really it would’ve been, what? 6 months, a year, 10 years, never? You’re the one always bitching about being a shitty Mom, and you know what? You are. There’s nobody left in that fucking future, and you would’ve died there searching for –“ 

I stepped forward and said, “You said I could –“ 

He rounded on me with a chilling intensity. “That’s what I would’ve done if you were my wife, but you’re not. You’re not anything to me. You know who is? My Mom, and you just took her from me.” 

_No, I didn’t. I know it was a harsh way to prove my point, but I didn’t know what we’d find when we got there._

“Yeah, you did. Why the hell else would you go with the date you did if you didn’t know what we’d find when we got there?” 

_I don’t know._ “We don’t even know if that’s what happened? We didn’t research it, and how could I know if you were going to save her or not? It hasn’t happened yet. I guess I’ll lose when the time comes, or – “ He got in my personal space again, and I stepped back into the wardrobe _Damn._ “Guess I’m losing now.” 

I looked down, and it made him look down too. After registering what he was doing, he quickly dropped the knife and took his hand off my shoulder. When he looked back up, he was a different man. 

Before he could think about it too much, I grabbed ahold of the front of his jacket, stood on my toes, and planted my lips on his. He was slow about responding, but after a few seconds, his mouth opened, and he adjusted his angle while his hand came up to cradle the back of my head. He was tentative and shaken, and about 10 seconds later, he whispered, “I’m sorry,” but before he could look, I wrapped my arms around him and held him close. He returned the embrace and buried his head in my shoulder. “I need to see it.” 

_No. It’s fine. I’ll –_

“I need to see it. I have to see if it needs stitches or . . . just let me see it.” 

I put my hand on the back of his head, and whispered, “I’ll help you come up with something so everybody wins. That’s what I should’ve said from the start. I’m sorry I didn’t.” 

He held me a little tighter. “Let me see it.” 

_No._

“Why can’t I just –“ 

_Because it was an accident, and your life has been one big guilt trip after another._

“It’s bad, isn’t it . . . You don’t want me to look . . . You’re telling me you should’ve helped me now . . . I need to see it, Beth.” 

_Why don’t you go get my first aid kit . . . I think it’s downstairs._

“You’re gonna take off and find some hole to die in.” 

_Nah, I’m not going to die._

“I’m gonna look.” 

_Please, don’t._

“You can’t stop me.” 

_No, but you haven’t looked so far, so I don’t think you really want –_

He stepped back away from me, and I tried to cover my stomach with my hands, but a very tortured man still looked back up at me. I looked down and saw that the blood had soaked through my shirt and was dripping down onto my boots. _Damn blood, oh how you’ve betrayed me! Come on, we can still salvage this._ I looked back up at Dean and shrugged. “I told you it was fine. Want to go get that first aid kit now?” He got a determined look on his face before he picked me up, carried me out of the room, and ran down the stairs with me. 

“You can’t take me to the hospital. How are you going to explain what happened?“ He put me in the car and slammed the door shut. “I’m fine, really I am . . . let me take care of it myself. The hospitals now suck. I can do this . . . let me do it, Dean.” He threw the car into reverse, and I said, “Or you could do it. You could . . . I could talk you through it, and . . . you’re driving too fast. It’s making me feel whoozy.” 

After it became apparent that he wasn’t going to slow down, I sat back and tried to control the spins I was having. A few minutes later, I said, “You’re right. I’m not a very good Mom. I try to be when I’m there, or I have since the do-over life, but Dad’s always having to take her away, and look at where I am now . . . I’m not –“ 

That’s when he finally decided to say something. “You’re not a bad Mom . . . You never were. I mean you started keeping an eye on her at night almost as soon as you met her, and you made up that peek-a-boo game with her, and you almost died trying to get her away from those changelings, and all of that was when you couldn’t remember her . . . and when we got back from re-living my life . . . You picked up the slack for me. I’ve been meaning to tell you that I’ve noticed how good you’ve gotten . . . She needs you more than she needs me now.” 

I looked over at him. “You’re not him . . . You’re not –“ 

“I am. Ask me anything.” 

No, he wasn’t my Dean. I’d decided that he wasn’t. “Why aren’t you healing me?” 

Looking up to the sky, he said, “Chuck’s not answering you, right? He put our connection together too. For some reason nothing he’s supposed to be doing is working in this timeline.” 

That was an easy lie to make up, but he was good at selling it. “After I told you about Adriel for the first time in Wyoming, what’d you say to me?” 

He flew around another car in front of us before saying, “I know I died, but I came back for you. I promise I won’t leave you alone down here again . . . I won’t leave you alone up there again either.” 

Okay, the demon seemed to know everything, and even though this Dean hadn’t seemed to retain much of what the demon knew, maybe he’d retained more than he let on. This Dean had never seen my soul before he went there with me. _Maybe see if he remembers anything from when I died?_

“When I was dying, and we were in my soul . . . Why did you say you couldn’t stick around for Rogue?” 

Picking up our speed if that was possible, he flew around a couple more cars, and it made me feel nauseous. “I thought everytime I saw her, I’d think about how much she looked like you . . . probably turn to the nearest bottle . . . ruin her life.” 

Okay, but when he was a demon, he could read minds. Maybe he got that from me then, or maybe he was getting it from me now? _Try blocking him out and ask something the demon would’ve had no interest in whatsoever._ “What are our dogs’ names?” 

_How’s it even possible for him to be driving this fast. I should probably stop distracting him with questions._ My attention went back on him when he said, “Jules and Millie.” 

_Jules and Millie?_ “Are they okay?” 

Worry flashed across his face when he looked at me that time. “Yeah, you asked me what their names were . . . remember?” _Oh yeah, I guess I did . . . I still don’t think he’s my Dean . . . he just wants to be now._


	73. Informed Decisions

“You’re not my Dean . . . You’re not my Dean . . . I know you’re not.” He didn’t know if he was, but he was trying really hard to be. 

“Ask me something else, Beth.” When she didn’t say anything, he nudged her to get her attention. “Ask me something else, Beth . . . anything.”

“That’s not the game.”

_Game? What game?_ “What game, Beth? We play games all time . . . What –“

“Werecats.”

_Werecats? Werecats. What the hell was a werecat?_ “You’re gonna have to give me more than that.”

She slowly shook her head. “No. You’re not him . . . He understands my code. He –“

“How the hell did I know your dogs names? You think the demon cared about those?”

She shook her head. “You heard what I was thinking . . . You must’ve –“

“I didn’t . . . You weren’t thinking about it. You were thinking about how fast I’m going.” She didn’t say anything, so he said, “And what about . . . what about the thing when you were dying, right? Nobody else was there for that, just you and me. I –“

“The demon could’ve –“

“He didn’t, Beth . . . I didn’t know what your soul looked like when we were there last week, so the demon didn’t look into that.“

“If you didn’t remember being there when you were there, then you can’t remember what my Dean said to me personal experience.”

“I did because I was there, Beth.“

“You know the kinds of things you’d say . . . doesn’t change anything.”

“I’m not that good at knowing me . . . What else ya got?”

When she didn’t say anything, he looked over at her, and she was watching him. “Dean?” 

It looked like she believed him. “Was that our game?” She nodded. He didn’t remember it . . . He was just going off of his gut feeling on things and saying things that didn’t really make any sense to him, but that seemed to have been the right answer . . . He felt like an absolute dick for kind of tricking her, but she was going downhill fast, and he didn’t want her to think about any of that shit he’d said back at the house, or she might go downhill faster. “I told you it was me.” 

She looked drowsy and confused. “Why don’t you feel like you anymore?” 

“I don’t know, Beth, but I’m gonna work on making my gut feelings stronger, and . . . I’ll be him, okay?” That guy he’d just been was never coming back. He was just going to be her guy from now on. 

“You’re doing what I did when Cas took my memories of you?”

No, he couldn’t say that . . . She’d start feeling sorry for him, and that’s the last thing he wanted. “No, like when you had a feeling about the Roadhouse and Ava in our crappy working vacation.”

“He’s really, really hidden then, huh?” 

Yeah, he probably was. “Nah, I’m him right now.”

“No, you said –“

“It comes and goes.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“I don’t. I think you’re trying to trick me.” A little, or trick himself, or he just really wanted to be that guy right now, because that’s who she needed. 

Dean looked over at her, and she gave him a dozy smile, like she’d won. Maybe for now, but he’d get her guy back for her, because this was never happening again. He focused on the road again for about 30 seconds, and the next time he looked over, her eyes were closed.

“Beth?”

“Hm?”

“Keep talking to me.”

“You don’t think Rogue will think it’s her fault if we don’t come back, do you?” 

“Why would she think –“ 

Beth, looking at him through blurry eyes, said, “I didn’t tell her to be good . . . but that I’d be back even if she wasn’t . . . and then she didn’t get to . . . she didn’t get to tell me to come back and hold my hand . . . she’s developing OCD . . . doing these little rituals to bring us home every time we leave, and . . . I don’t know what to do about it . . . she –“ 

Dean put his hand on her arm to get her to calm down and said, “She’s okay . . . She’ll be better when she sees you again.” 

“Us . . . she hides under the bed when you disappear . . . unless Dad takes her somewhere else.” Putting a bloody hand over his, she added, “I’m sorry I ruined your life.”

“You didn’t –“

“Not my Dean’s . . . yours. I’m getting confused.” 

_Welcome to the club._ This was going to do a number on both of them . . . if she lived. “You didn’t ruin my life, and I stabbed you. Don’t apologize to me.” 

Beth groggily responded, “I stab me and Cas does, and lots of things do . . . I was mean to him . . . you a lot . . . and I ruined his life . . . and I kept telling him that his Mom should die . . . it’s just . . . his Mom . . . your Mom . . . she made her decisions, right or wrong, she made them, and . . . Rogue . . . she’s never done anything wrong to anybody . . . except the people I can’t get her to stop punching, but her heart’s in the right place . . . maybe not the first time she did it, but every other time after that . . . she’s done it to protect someone else . . . and she deserves the chance to grow up and make good and bad decisions and . . . just grow up . . . I know I’ll never see that happen . . . I mean, I –“ 

Dean squeezed her arm to get her attention and then told her they were almost to the hospital, so she’d see Rogue grow up. “No, I won’t . . . If not this, another time . . . I’ve never thought I’d see her grow up . . . never.” 

He didn’t know what to say to that. “We could retire.” 

She looked away from him and said, “You’re always trying to get me to retire . . . or you used to try to get me to retire . . . before I died . . . and then I did, and you brought me back, and I remember telling you a few days later that I’d be willing to retire, but it couldn’t be until the big things, like the Leviathan and New Orleans were gone, and it couldn’t be in the house I’d wanted . . . cause our kids at the camp needed us . . . that we’d just have to retire at the camp, and you were . . . you were so sick, but it made you happy anyway . . . but that’s all gone now . . . You’re not my Dean.” 

“What if we learn how to retire together?”

“I’m nothing to you . . . You don’t want –“

“I didn’t mean what I said earlier. I meant everything I said last night –“

She muttered something about it being confusing. Maybe, but it was true. He didn’t know what the hell happened back at their house. None of the stuff he’d said should’ve been said, and he definitely shouldn’t have stabbed her. She’d shown him what she’d been talking about since they got here . . . how much Sam and he being hunters had done to save the world. It’d hit home even better than when she’d shown him the evil he’d pushed back as a hunter, but in doing that, it’d crushed any hopes he had of saving his Mom. 

“I’m sorry.” She was sorry? 

He looked over at her, and her eyes were closed again, but she must’ve been listening to what he was thinking. They were at the hospital, so Dean parked and started getting rid of her weapons. “Don’t be sorry. Just do what you have to do to live, okay?” 

“My job?”

“Yeah, your job is to stay alive, right?” She nodded, and he got out to pick her up and carry her inside. Mostly, Dean thought that he should go to jail for what he did, so he wasn’t planning on coming up with any kind of a cover story. 

Maybe she wasn’t as out of it as she looked, because when he handed her off to the doctors, she said, “A man attacked me . . . 6 feet tall, blue blood shot eyes, black hair, jeans, green shirt, gloves . . . Who where’s gloves in August? He was in our room. I don’t have jewelry . . . I called for my husband, the man stabbed me . . . went out the window. My husband could’ve either gone after him or brought me here . . . I’m here.” Almost dead, and she sold it. The doctor told the nurse to take it down, and then left with Beth while the nurse went with Dean to go over paperwork and call the police.

Dean was in her room when she started to wake up, and the first thing she did when she saw him was smile. “Are you, you, or are you, him?” 

Hanging his head, Dean answered, “Still stuck with –“

“Not stuck . . . wanted to see if you’d tell me.”

His gaze flicked up to her eyes, so she’d know he meant what he was about to say. “I won’t lie to you again . . . wasn’t really lying on the way here. Just . . . maybe wanted to end it and have him take over. Thought if I could convince myself I was him that’d happen . . . I think I almost had it, or I wouldn’t have known some of those answers, but it didn’t quite work.”

Looking down at his forearm Dean added, “So, for now, it looks like you’re stuck with me, and I’m not me with this thing on my arm . . . It’s not an excuse for what I did, and I did it. I know I did it. It wasn’t your guy at all . . . And no matter what you say or think, I know what I did is unforgivable, so I don’t want forgiveness from you. It won’t change anything . . . What happened isn’t on the Mark. It’s on me because I’m the man behind the Mark . . . I just don’t know what that means anymore. I need Sam . . . not sure who I am without him, and I’m trying everything I can not to think about the fact that I’m never gonna see him again . . . just about getting by with the thought that the one on your team is him, but we have to find the rest of the team first for me to even see him . . . and . . . I’m putting pressure on you for . . . what I don’t know, and you and me don’t really know each other . . . I mean we do, but we don’t, and this is it. This is my life now . . . until I become something that I don’t want to be again, and . . . I have to save Mom, but if I do, and what we saw this morning happens . . . what am I supposed to do with that?” 

“Ask your Mom what to do? Lay it all out for her, the good and the bad, and ask her what she wants . . . And if we don’t know each other, then we should get to know each other, and I’ll stop being such a cow.” 

He snorted, and she gave him a soft smile. “I can be much easier to live with than I have been, or I am when I’m not playing games.“ He smiled and hung his head again, so she said, “We could think of our rooms as apartments, so at the end of the day, we have a bit of separation. I mean I think the way it’s supposed to work is you hang out and date someone first to see if there’s anything there . . . Just because there was chemistry there when you were a demon, doesn’t mean there’s any now . . . No pressure. Pressure is the last thing either of us need.” 

He got what she was saying. He needed to slow down and re-evaluate his expectations. Wasn’t about chemistry though, or at least it wasn’t for him, and he definitely got glimpses of how things could be with her. Maybe those glimpses were what he was holding onto and trying to force into a full-time situation without laying down the groundwork first. 

He nodded to let her know he agreed with her, and she said, “So, for now, we’ll both know what happened and why, but we’ll put it behind us and pretend like it was the drugged out Cas I described to the doctors.” He looked back up at her and laughed. “And if the Incredible Hulk looks like he’s making a comeback -” 

“You run . . . Don’t try to talk him down. I’ll find you when he’s gone again.” She nodded in agreement, and he relaxed a little. “So, you think I should leave it up to my Mom to decide?” 

“Yeah, but you have to paint the whole picture, because the second she hears you and Sam grew up to be hunters, she’s not going to be happy about it. And I’m not saying you should coerce her into sacrificing herself either, but she needs to know everything, so she can make an informed decision.” 

“And if she doesn’t make the one you want?” 

Looking him squarely in the eye, Beth answered, “Then she’s not a very good person.” 

He slumped. “That’s my Mom. You know you’re always going on about how she doesn’t like you, but I don’t think you like her much either.” 

Beth looked like she had something to say, but wasn’t going to say it, so he told her he wasn’t going to Hulk out. “Okay. Am I glad she made the deal to save your Dad if it meant you and Sam could be born? Yeah, I am. Do I think it sucks that she had to pay the price for that? Yeah, I do. But where I’m conflicted is . . . What about your Dad? He goes to sleep every night next to a hunter who knows the only reason he’s sleeping next to her is because of the deal she made for his life. Sure, he’s seen the evil humans can do and the suffering they can cause because of Vietnam, but real evil . . . it’s about to kick his ass and ruin his life in the worst possible way, and she knows something is coming.” 

“So, that means she should die? What about you? You forgot to put the right kind of salt down when you were staying with Sam in Stanford, and Jess died, right?” 

Taking a deep breath, Beth said, “Yeah, I did . . . I know it’s negligence on my part that lead to Jess dying, and I’m not okay with that, but I also know what your Mom’s going to be looking at when she’s face-to-face with Azazel, and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody . . . She’s going to feel horrified at what she’s done to her family, and she’ll be thinking about all the things she should’ve done to protect them. She’ll want to find a way to get down off that ceiling, but she won’t be able to move . . . She’ll feel powerless and be begging your father in her head not to come into that nursery and not to look up, so she can have more time to try and find a way down . . . I know those are what my last thoughts would’ve been . . . Maybe if she knows the larger picture and knows her sons will grow up to be good men and prepared for what the angels have planned for them, it’ll give her some kind of peace . . . You’re also forgetting that I made a deal long before I met my family . . . Did I understand the ramifications? No. I still don’t. Have I told them about it? No. I couldn’t remember it for a long time, so they figured it out themselves, but the finer details I’ve known for about 2 years now, and I still haven’t said anything . . . You’re the only one who knows about those, and –“ 

Leaning forward, Dean interrupted her. “But you aren’t going to die when your deal comes due, if it ever does.” 

She looked away from him and said, “I don’t know that . . . Like I said, I don’t know what’s going to happen . . . I can sympathize with your Mom all too well . . . I’m not saying I don’t, or that I’m better than her. I didn’t know anything about the soul mate thing when I made the deal. I knew the Righteous man and I were supposed to be linked, but I didn’t know it meant he could die if I did. I never knew anything about what our connection would entail, but . . . that doesn’t change the fact that I made the deal without all the facts and without really knowing what it could mean for him.” 

She glanced at him, and he got that she wasn’t just talking about his Mom’s choices or her choices. He’d gotten his Mark without all the facts too. She looked away from him again, and added, “I didn’t know when I was trying to find who I was and then trying to find him that I was actually doing things that would destroy my universe . . . I just wanted to help him if they were doing to him what they were doing to me, and then I found out about the war and how we were supposed to save the people left after it, so I looked for more things that could maybe help us with the war and found all kinds of information on the tablets. 

Then I found out all the things I’d read would be what caused the war, and I knew it had to be what I’d read about the tablets, so I needed to find more information to try and keep that from happening. While I was searching for that, I found out that I was supposed to lead the Righteous Man away from the darkness of Cain. I read up on that to see what it meant and found out about Amara and the Mark for Chuck, and I thought if I couldn’t protect the tablets after I got out of Heaven, then I could protect God from having his power taken from him by locking him away. 

It was my fault he was under threat in the first place . . . that’s why I offered to do it . . . and I thought if this war was coming because of me, then if I found a way to help my partner, who I was sure would want me in his family, just because . . . if I could help make his things with the Apocalypse easier for him, then he’d be able to help me stop my war, so that’s why I wanted to know what was going to happen to him in the future . . . and that just lead to my war happening . . . well, that and agreeing to have my Dad block my memories of Heaven. 

I didn’t know the memory blocks would take so long to break down. Dad said they would when I was ready to cope with what happened in Heaven, and I just thought . . . Well, first I thought, what does ‘cope’ mean, and then after he explained it, I thought it wouldn’t take that long, because my life was what it was, so why was there any need to cope with anything . . . And that’s not even getting into the deal I made with Crowley to take Raphael out, which led to Michael going dark, and Dean having to kill him . . . Anyway, I understand where your Mom is coming from on doing things without knowing the consequences of them . . . That’s why I said you should maybe paint the whole picture for her once we figure out what caused that Apocalypse, so she can make an informed decision.”


	74. The Worst Mother-In-Laws Are Hunters

Dean came in the door and started to say, “So, Dad cancelled for Sunday. Said something about Mom – “ 

I glanced up from my book. “Doesn’t want a screw up hunter near her family. Yeah, I know.” 

Dean stopped short at that. “Well, I was going to say she thinks the kid me is coming down with something and didn’t want to get you sick, but I figured she thought what happened to you was hunting related . . . I take it she stopped by. What’d she say?” 

I finished reading the bottom two sentences and turned the page. “Pretty much what I said . . . think she takes after her Dad on how great she thinks the Campbell dynasty is . . . Wonder what she’d think if she knew who my Dad is . . . He’s more of a badass than hers ever was, and that’s without him using his powers.” 

Dean sat on the couch near my feet and said, “Must’ve pissed you off if you’re going with the whole my dad could kick her dad’s ass thing, huh?” 

I glanced at him over the top of my book before I looked back down and said, “I might’ve slammed the door in her face when she told me not to have children . . . I’m usually pretty good about keeping my cool when being threatened, but that one touched more than one nerve.” 

Sitting back, he said, “Wait, so she threatened you?” 

Yep. “What do you expect? I brought the supernatural to her normal neighborhood out of sheer incompetence, or that’s what it must’ve been, since apparently I can’t even do the basics right.” 

He slumped a little. “Yeah, I might’ve said something about how you didn’t put any wards up the time you and me met . . . and I also said that you had this place locked down like Fort Knox. You mad?” 

I looked up at him again, and he looked pretty sheepish, so I smiled before I looked back down at my book. “Yeah, but not at you . . . Mostly I’ve been trying to figure out how I can get back in her good books, but I think I’m a lost cause . . . Shouldn’t take much for you though. She feels sorry for you because I’m ruining any chance at a normal life you really seem to want.” 

Dean finally looked at my book and said, “What are you reading?” 

_Uh oh._ “The Running Man. I think I might be one of the few people right now who actually knows that Stephen King wrote it.” 

_Here it comes._

“Yeah, here it comes. Where’d you get it?” 

_I went to Topeka?_

He smiled. “Is that the only one you got? If you make me out a list I could go get you more.” 

“I got like 10.” _And yes, I know I just had surgery yesterday, and I’m out against doctor’s advice, so I shouldn’t have driven or carried 10 books at once._

“Or got up from the couch.” 

_What about for food?_

He smiled again and said, “I came home for lunch so you didn’t have to get up and make anything.” 

_And to check my bandages._

“Yeah, that too . . . What do you want for dinner?” 

_Anything?_

“Yeah, anything . . . I know we’re pretending like I didn’t stab you, but I did, so you can pretty much have whatever you want for life.” 

_Until you stab me again, so you don’t have to do it anymore?_

“Can’t believe I have to say this, but I promise I won’t stab you again.” 

He was starting to feel guilty, so I tried to change the topic. “I won’t hold it over you. Make whatever you want, or we could go pick something up and go see a movie . . . _Cujo_ is out right now.” 

Before he could veto that, I added, “I bet there’s a drive-in somewhere, so I’ll just be in the car the whole time, which is like being on the couch. You could go ask your good friend John where the closest one is, since we’re ‘new to the area’ . . . Make me sound like a big flaming bitch. Say I’m being awful to you about leaving me home alone all day, and you’re doing it to keep me quiet. That way your Mom will feel even more sorry for you, and it’ll lay the foundation for you to go over there this weekend saying you need to get out of the house and away from me.” 

He relaxed a little and gave me something of a soft look before he said, “All right,” and got up. “But I’m not making you sound like a big flaming bitch.” 

_Yeah, but –_

“Yeah, but nothing. You didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m not going to let you or anyone else think you did.“ 

_I did. I was harsh and insensitive._

Leaning over me, Dean said, “Yeah? Does that mean I should go stab the bartender up the street?” 

_No, but –_

“No, but nothing. Doesn’t matter what you did, it shouldn’t have happened. I don’t get it. You stood up for yourself when I was a demon.” 

_I didn’t do anything wrong –_

“You didn’t do anything wrong this time, and even if you had, what I did is not okay, and I don’t know how, but I’m going to find a way to make you believe it. If you want to forgive me after that, then I’ll accept it, but not until then . . . I’m not going to say you’re a bitch to get in the door with them again, and I’m not going to let you take the blame for me on this. I’m going to make sure she knows exactly whose fault this was, and we’ll figure it out from there.” 

“No, but –“ 

He leaned down to kiss me, and I was more than a little surprised by it, because it was the first time we’d done that since he’d been a demon . . . my Dean was in there though. I may not be able to talk to him, but I could feel him . . . think maybe that’s why I hadn’t been able to turn Demon Dean down. Well, that, and he was hot. This Dean was too. Attraction to Dean had never been a problem for me. 

While it may not have been his intention at first, it turned into one hell of a kiss. When Dean pulled away a minute later, his eyes searched my face for something, and then he smiled before saying, “Just so you know. There’s nothing wrong with our ‘chemistry’,” and stood up to go find out where a drive in cinema was from his Dad.

The next day I put my book down and looked at my watch. _2 o’clock. Same time she called over yesterday._ John had come over early this morning and said he could use some help on his car, so Dean had jumped at the chance to work on the Impala. If it was Mary, then maybe 2 o’clock was nap time or something? 

Struggling to get to my feet, I slowly made my way to the front door. Thought maybe I’d miss her, but she must’ve allotted me extra time to get there, because when I opened the door, there Mary was. She gave me an apologetic smile. “Hi, Beth. Is it okay if I come in? I won’t stay long.” 

I looked at the pie in her hands. Store bought. Dean would love it just as much as one that took hours to make. “Yeah, sure.” 

Stepping back to let her through, I shut the door behind me and followed her into the living room, but I was feeling somewhat irritable and exhausted by that point, mostly because of how long it’d taken me to get to the door and back, so I sat on the couch without offering her a seat. “I brought you this. I hope it’s all right.” She went to hand me the pie, and I was going to take it, but then it looked like she thought better of it and said she’d put it in the kitchen for me. “Do you want a slice?” 

“Thanks, but I think I’ll save it for Dean. He’s something of a pie enthusiast.” 

Walking back into the room, she said, “That’s actually why I’m here.” 

“Because Dean’s a pie enthusiast?”

Sitting next to me on the right, Mary said, “Uh, no, I think I owe you an apology. He showed me the Mark on his arm.” Leaning closer, she added, “I don’t know how much you know about it, but it isn’t safe for you to –“  
“I know all about the Mark of Cain. I know it’s purpose, and I know what happens to the one who bears it. I know it looks bad, but it’s not who he is.” 

She decided to change tactics. “I heard you lost a daughter recently. I was sorry to hear that, and after what I said yesterday . . . I hope you can forgive me.” 

I didn’t know Dean had been planning to tell her that. Now I wondered what he’d said. “She . . . she isn’t dead, or at least not as far as I know. I just don’t know where she is or when I’ll see her again, but I’ll find her.” Mary asked if I had any pictures of her, so she could have a look, and I got up to go get a picture thinking that it’d be good for her to see her granddaughter, even if she didn’t know she was her granddaughter yet, but then I wondered who the hell the two men standing in the doorway of my kitchen were.

Walking was a struggle for me, so dodging, blocking, or taking a hit was impossible, which meant that when the one closest to me gave me a hard punch to the stomach, I didn’t do any of those things and fell to my knees. _”Dean! I’m in trouble!”_

I looked down at my shirt and saw that had definitely opened something up that should’ve stayed closed. _Leave the angel blade in the couch. They’ll probably take it, and fuck that . . . “Dean!”_

Looking at Mary, I grunted out, “Relatives of yours, I’m assuming. Be glad I’m not getting any of mine involved. Are you here to convince me I’m with the wrong man? No, that’d be too selfless for you . . . My guess is it’s to get someone with the Mark out of your neighborhood . . . Well, fuck you.” 

_Yeah, punch me in the face all you want._ I looked up at the guy who did it and said, “Keep doing that . . . Whatever you’ve got, I can take it, and I won’t fight back, just to make you look like an asshole.” 

He decided to take me up on my offer, and I landed on my side from the power of the next hit before I looked at Mary. “You can’t kill Dean . . . or he’ll come back as a Knight of Hell. He wasn’t possessed when I met him. He was a demon . . . so if this doesn’t make him leave –“ A kick to the stomach made everything in me hurt. _”Dean!”_ “Don’t kill him. When he comes back from being dead, he’ll come for your entire family . . . but he won’t kill them. He’ll kill you and John, maybe Sam, and bring Dean with him . . . Then he’ll –“ _Fuck . . . didn’t need the boot to the face._ “Then he’ll hunt every last Campbell down . . . might do that as it is.” _Ah, fuck that boot to the face was worse . . . “Dean!”_

After that, I focused more on her relatives. “Has Mary told you she made a deal with a yellow-eyed demon 10 years ago, and her deal’s coming due in about 2 ½ months . . . She made it the same night her Mom and Dad died. It’s the reason John’s still here . . . She didn’t think Azazel would be coming for little Sammy, but he is, and he’ll find him anywhere.“ 

Mary flew off the couch and gave me a swift punch before grabbing ahold of my hair to make me look at her while she demanded to know what I meant about her son. _No, don’t say it, Beth . . . You told Dean to tell her . . . Yeah, but I thought we’d have time to figure out whether or not this is the trunk first. You have to make sure it isn’t. You can’t erase Rogue . . . You can stick that knife you got from your oaf of a relative to my throat all you want, Mary. I’m not saying any more. Said too much as it is._

“Got my own daughter to think about . . . You’re not getting anything out of me . . . I’m not really a fan of you right now.“ Apparently, they thought it was a serious enough issue that any further questioning didn’t need to happen here. She looked up and the oafs started getting me to my feet, so they could drag me towards the kitchen and go out the back, I guess. As long as they weren’t taking me to the bathroom, so they could throw me in the tub, I was okay.

They stopped when Dean came flying through the front door shouting my name. “Got your message. Wasn’t sure at first if -” Then his tone changed. “What’s going on?” I tried to look up at him . . . _Yeah, you guys should use me as a shield. That isn’t a look you want to be getting from him.,/i >_

“She knows probably the bare minimum about the Mark, but it’s enough for her to know she doesn’t want you living down the street from her family. Think she wanted you to see what’ll happen to me if we don’t leave town . . . I might’ve mentioned Azazel was coming for Sam and thought better about expanding on that . . . Think they might’ve thought the blood on the floor was message enough and were going to question me about it somewhere else?” 

“What do you want me to do, Beth?” 

I glanced at him again to make sure he didn’t have black eyes. He didn’t. He wouldn’t touch his Mom, but the two behind me? “Just make everyone leave and help me get cleaned up.” 

He took in the sight of me again and said, “Gonna take another trip to the hospital to do that.” 

_No, I want you to take care of it._

_Is your angel blade still in the couch?_ I nodded. _Got your lucky silver knife?_ I shook my head. _Can you take the guy on your left?_

He was the smaller of the two. _I can try, but watch your Mom._

_On three._ “Three.” I pushed back towards the guy on my left with everything I had. The guy on my right wouldn’t let go of my right arm, but maybe 2 seconds later, there was an angel blade sticking out of his shoulder, so he did then, and the guy on my left and I fell on the ground. 

I tried crawling towards the living room, but a hand landed on my ankle to pull me back into the kitchen. Luckily by then, Dean had gotten to the one with an angel blade sticking out of him, pulled the blade out and slammed it down through the other guy’s forearm to make him let me go. I really didn’t want them to have my blade. I wanted it back. I wanted it back now. 

Crouching down over me, Dean put his hand on my back to calm me down, while he looked at his Mom and yelled, “Where do you think you’re going? Sit down! We need to talk . . . unless you want me to kill these two and go get John, so I can show him who his wife really is.” 

She stopped heading for the front door, and Dean grabbed my angel blade out of the guy’s arm to give it back to me. “Feel better?” Hugging it to my chest with one of my arms, I nodded, and he looked at the two men. “Walk away.” They both looked at Mary, who hadn’t sat down, and she indicated for them to go before her eyes went back on Dean. He waited until the two men went out the back door before wrapping an arm around me to help me get to my feet. He helped me get all the way to the couch, and her Mom didn’t make her move until he was helping me sit and had his back to her. 

He let go of me, turned, caught the knife, twisted it out of her hand, and handed it back to me. “Thought I said sit.” She wouldn’t do it. Mostly, she looked like she was going to try and take him on. 

“Are you going to threaten to tell on her to your Dad again? I could do it . . . I could just crawl over there and -” 

His attention was on Mary, but he put his hand back to indicate he wanted me to stop. “Yeah, you heard her right. She meant John is my Dad . . . He is. You’re my Mom . . . My name is Dean Winchester. The first time we met, the angels sent me back and told me to stop it from happening, but really there was no stopping it. They just wanted me to know what the Yellow-eyed demon did to Sam . . . Got sent back again with Sam another time to keep an angel from killing you and Dad, but the angels wiped your memory of that . . . This time God sent me back . . . not sure why. I know that if the 4-year old me had actually been coming down with something, you would’ve made him tomato-rice soup, just like your Mom made you, and you sing him to sleep with Hey Jude, your favorite Beatles song . . . cause that’s what you used to sing to me. I remember there was one time you and Dad had this big fight, and he took off . . . Probably wasn’t more than a week or two before Beth and I got here. Dad called and wouldn’t come home, and I gave you a hug . . . and told you that he still loved you, and I loved you too, and that I’d never leave you . . . and then you asked if I wanted some pie.” 

The rest he could’ve gotten from working with John, but that last one should’ve done the trick, because it’d just been the two of them. There was only one problem. “You can read minds. You’re not –“ 

Dean shook his head. “I can read her mind, because we’re soul mates. I told you that me meeting her was like destiny, and that’s why . . . I can’t read anybody else’s mind.” 

She looked down at me when I added, “Yeah, you’ve never liked me . . . starting to think of you as the mother-in-law from Hell.” 

Dean slumped. “You’re not helping.” 

_Wasn’t trying to help. I mostly want her to go, so I can stop bleeding all over the place._

“Is it bad?” 

_Yeah, I’m ruining the couch._

“I don’t care about the couch.” 

_I do. I’m the one who has to lie on it all the time._

“I’ll get us a new one.” 

_They’re expensive, and I’m out of work right now._

Looking over his shoulder, Dean said, “I’ll find a poker . . . Uh. That is bad.” His attention darted towards the kitchen. “Your first aid kit’s still in –“ 

I nodded, so he told his Mom to stay put while he went to go find it, and she decided this was a good time to have a chit-chat with me, I guess. “So, this daughter you lost is supposed to be –“ 

“Your granddaughter? Yeah. And we lost her because we showed up in 1983 without her.” 

When Dean came back into the room with my bag, he knelt on the floor in front of me and told me to lie back, so he could take a look at my stomach. He didn’t look for very long. _”Let me take you to the hospital.”_

“No. I was just there. There’s no way to explain this if you want me to leave your Mom out of it.” 

“Okay. Tell me what to –“ 

His Mom pushed him out of the way. “Why don’t you get a picture of your daughter, Dean? I’ll take care of this.” He waited to see if I was okay with that, and I nodded. Let’s see what she did. 


	75. Advice

“You’re a sneaky . . . woman.” Dean watched Beth trying not to call his Mom a bitch in front of him, and his Mom trying to put Beth back together while subtly interrogating her. On the list of things he’d thought would happen today, this hadn’t been on it. “I know you know what the Knights of Hell are . . . and if you don’t, then you were a sneaky . . . woman the last time I talked to you, so which is it?” 

His Mom ignored her, and Beth softened her approach. “I need to know . . . It’s important. I need to know if you really don’t know, or if you’re setting up a baseline for other questions later. I’ll tell you either way, but I need to know which it is first.” 

His Mom stopped what she was doing and looked up at Beth to search her face for sincerity before she looked back down at what she was doing. “I heard stories about them growing up . . . I didn’t know how they were made though.” 

Beth huffed in frustration before responding. “You know how one was made . . . Cain . . . as in the father of murder, Cain . . . from Cain and Abel. He created the Knights of Hell, but he also killed all of them except Abaddon.” 

Dean didn’t really know why this was so important to her, but Beth watched his Mom closely when she said the next part. “And Abaddon went missing in the 1950s after she chased Henry Winchester through a time portal he created using a blood sigil.” His Mom looked up at Beth, so Beth nodded. “Yeah, I’m talking about John’s Dad . . . That’s why he went missing. He turned up in 20 –“ 

Beth looked at Dean for that one. “13.” 

Beth looked back at his Mom and said, “2013 and brought Abaddon with him after Abaddon wiped out the US Men of Letters . . . Funny for a man from Normal, which is what you really wanted, but John was supposed to be a Men of Letters legacy. The Winchesters go back as Men of Letters probably as long as Campbells have been hunters.” Beth kept watching his Mom and added, “Which is interesting considering the Campbell and Winchester bloodlines needed to converge, so Sam and Dean could be born . . . Winchesters go all the way back to Cain . . . they’re the true vessels for the archangel Michael. The Campbell’s . . . well, they go back to Abel, and they’re the true vessels for the archangel Lucifer. The Apocalypse is intended to happen in your sons’ generation. It’s why Azazel does what he does with Sam in November.” 

Whatever look was on his Mom’s face made Beth say, “This isn’t the main timeline anymore . . . Do what you have to do to save her, Dean.” 

_What? How –_

Beth looked at him and said, “The last time I talked to your Mom, I gave her the history of the bunker and went into the Men of Letters, and she figured out that the angels put she and your Dad together . . . but it was a natural conclusion. It wasn’t because I told her any of it in 1983 . . . She would’ve known it then if this were the main timeline.” 

Yeah, but what about where they were 2 days ago? 

“You might kill off billions of people in this universe doing it, but you won’t kill everyone in all the universes, including you, me, and Rogue . . . Since this is a different universe, anything could’ve led to what we saw . . . Something goes wrong though. Should’ve let me stick around and see what caused it. I could – “ 

He slumped before pointing at her. “You’re not going anywhere like that. I’ll do what you said . . . I’ll fill her in on everything, maybe show her what we saw . . . See what she thinks. I’m just not sure why we got put on a side mission. It seems like we’re here to stop this Apocalypse from happening, but I thought everything we were doing had something to do with the Mark?” 

“Maybe it does, but it’s not your Mark. The future here looks totally different from anything I’ve seen.” 

_Cain?_

“Maybe, or maybe Sam? Could be anything.” 

So, maybe this universe got destroyed and Sam got the Mark for some reason? “Why wouldn’t the others be here with us on this?” 

Shaking her head, Beth said, “Maybe we got kicked off the team for some reason, or maybe they got kicked off the team, because they weren’t with us? Maybe we got sent to a bizarro branch worse than mine is and have to fix it without any help to get back to them, or maybe we’re going to keep jumping separate to them until we finish the mission? Maybe we’ll never get back. I don’t know.” 

So, this might not be a lesson or a one and done kind of thing? He might’ve gotten her kicked off the team or gotten her family kicked off the team, and if they couldn’t get things back on track, she’d never see her daughter again? 

“It doesn’t change things from my perspective, Dean. I pretty much figured us showing up here without anyone else was bad.” 

Yeah, well he’d thought it was bad, but he hadn’t thought it might be permanent. Here he was parading his family around in front of her, and he was the reason her family had disappeared in the blink of an eye. 

“It’s not your fault, Dean.” 

How was this not his fault? “You didn’t have a choice in –“ 

“Pretty sure I chose to do the time spell with you, so we could move Abaddon.” He looked at his Mom who was watching them and said, “We have a lot of explaining to do. I can –“ 

Tilting her head towards Beth, his Mom said, “Let me finish with this first . . . Why don’t you get some ice for her face? And we can talk about it while she’s resting.” He nodded distractedly and went towards the kitchen to do what she’d said.

\---------------

“So, she can talk to God?” 

Could. “Not since we’ve been here . . . It was my idea to go back in time and move Abaddon, so that version of me would never get the Mark. Must’ve broken some kind of rule or . . . what am I’m gonna do if I can’t get her back to the rest of them?” 

“Take it one day at a time?” 

Yeah. That’s what he’d been trying to do, but . . . “How am I supposed to look at her now, especially after what I’ve already done?” 

His Mom glanced towards the couch and said, “Well, you’re going to have to find a way to do it, because you can’t leave her. You’re two strangers meeting in a foreign land, but she’s all you have, and you’re all she has . . . If you want to keep that Mark under control, I think you know you have to hunt to give it what it wants without giving it what it wants all the time . . . or if she knows how to get it off of you with this Book of the Damned, then let her do it.” 

“It takes a human sacrifice, and I’m not willing to . . . I’m not doing that.” 

Sitting back, his Mom said, “And every person you kill with it isn’t a sacrifice to it?” 

He ducked his head. “I’m not killing –“ 

“But you have, right?” 

“Not unless they were meat suits for demons or angels.” 

She didn’t look like she believed him. “Not even when you were a Knight of Hell?” 

No. Crowley gave him demons to feed the Mark, and he found his own demons on the side after he met up with the rest of them. “Not saying I was a perfect gentlemen, but no, I only killed demons when I was a demon.” 

His Mom was quiet, so he glanced at her, and she shook her head. “If you think the only way to control it is by not hunting, then don’t hunt, but what happens if you don’t kill?” 

“I get more aggressive . . . And if it goes past that, then it starts killing me, like I start coughing up blood, and then I guess I’ll become a demon again, but you were right. If I give into it too much, then I’ll become just as much of a monster.” 

Looking towards the living room again, his Mom asked, “And what happened the other day?” 

“Nothing that should’ve ever happened. We had an argument . . . I was pissed off about it all night, and then the next morning, she wanted to go into the future to see if we were on the main trunk of the tree or a branch. When she finished the time spell, we were standing in a bombed out house on a bombed out street with no signs of life . . . It was post-Apocalyptic landscape, and she wanted to stay there to find out what made it happen . . . I wouldn’t let her, or she never would’ve come back. And there’s no way I could let that future happen, but it meant letting what’s supposed to happen to you happen, and I raged out . . . Said all kinds of things I didn’t mean, and the next thing I knew there was a knife sticking out of her, and my hand was on the handle, and . . . I didn’t even know I’d done it . . . can’t undo it. Can’t make her pissed at me for it either . . . She stood up to me when I was a dick to her as a demon, but with me, it’s like she thinks she deserved it, and I don’t know how to make her think she didn’t or how to get her to see that what I did wasn’t okay. It isn’t normal. I would never . . . but I did.” 

“What happened today? You asked her what she wanted you to do. Why?” 

“When I was a demon, I told her I wouldn’t kill unless I had to defend myself from someone else with the Mark or she told me I could . . . I think she calmed him down . . . in a lot of ways, but I think maybe one of them was taking the kill pressure off of him. Might’ve automatically slipped into that way of thinking when I saw her like that.” 

“You could do that again.” 

He could, but something like that would be harder now. “I could control it better as a demon.” 

His Mom decided to change the subject and said, “And your brother? What would he say?” 

Dean smiled briefly at the thought of Sam. “He’d stop at nothing to get the Mark off my arm. The only way to do it may not be what I want, but that wouldn’t stop him.” 

There was a knock at the door, and Dean glanced at his Mom. She got up with him. They both had an idea of who it was, and opening the door . . . Yeah, there was his Dad. “Hey, everything okay? Dean took off like a bat out of hell earlier, and you haven’t come home yet. Startin’ to worry.” 

His Mom looked his Dad dead in the eye and said, “Yeah, we’re fine. Beth took a tumble down the stairs and broke her stitches open.” 

Looking past them, his Dad said, “Okay if I see her? I haven’t had a chance to pay my respects since she got back from the hospital.” 

_Oh god, Dad doesn’t think there’s something going on here, does he?_ “Yeah, come on in . . . She’s on the couch . . . Beth! John is here. He wants to see you.” 

They heard her grumble, “Did he come over to lose a game of Risk?” and his Dad laughed until he rounded the corner of the living room. 

Dean recognized the look on his Dad’s face before his Dad looked back at him and demanded to know what the he’d been thinking leaving her alone. “She should be in a hospital!” 

He could understand why his Dad was pissed. She should be in a hospital. “She is right here, and she does not want to go to the hospital. She doesn’t need a babysitter either. What she needs is a game of Risk the way she was promised she’d have tomorrow, because she needs something to cheer her up.“ 

Something brushed past Dean’s leg, and he looked down to see what it was. That’s the problem with leaving the door open. Little kids can just walk right into your house and anywhere they want without anybody noticing. His Mom saw 4-year old Dean at the last second and was going to pick him up, so he couldn’t see the bloody mess that was Beth, but the kid dodged around his Dad to get away from her. 

When the kid saw Beth, he stopped briefly until his Mom got to within a couple of feet and then he launched himself forward to give Beth a hug saying, “No, I heard her calling me. She needed help. I want to take care of her, Mom.” Should’ve introduced the kid Dean to Beth sooner, and they could’ve figured out this branch versus trunk thing faster, because adult Dean definitely didn’t remember this. 

“I did need help, but I needed my Dean’s help, and I’m okay now. Your Mom helped fix me.” 

The kid shook his head. “You’re hurt.” 

Beth patted him on the back and said, “Yeah, but you know what that tells me?” The kid shook his head again, so Beth said, “If it hurts, then I know I’m still alive, and if I’m alive, then I know I can heal, so I’ll be okay.” 

The kid Dean whispered, “You promise?” 

Beth smiled. “I promise.” The kid Dean offered to stay and cheer her up, and Beth looked at his Mom. “Think your Mom could probably use some cheering up. She looks like she might cry.” Yeah, she did. Must not have doubts that he and the kid were the same person anymore.


	76. Life on Mars

“A second honeymoon?” Dean’s attention darted to me before he went back to focusing on his pizza. 

“I’m not sure if just us being here is what made this timeline happen, or what, but this definitely didn’t happen when I was growing up. I don’t know what that means for our mission, but . . . Dad says she really wants this, and . . . I know you’re not really up for it right now. That’s why I said I’d talk to you before I agreed to anything.” 

_Since I’ll be the one babysitting all day, while he’s at work?_ “How long?” 

“Couple of weeks . . . You know, while you’re off work, and Dad said he’d give us some cash for their food or whatever.” 

“You know this is weird, right? I mean we’re going to be babysitting you and your brother, which is weird enough, and after the way she reacted when she found out you had the Mark, why would your Mom suddenly be on board with that?” 

“I don’t know. I think she’s up to something too . . . You think she’s still gonna go through with it?” 

“You mean like this is some kind of a farewell tour?” He nodded, so I said, “Maybe, but if she wants to steer her sons away from the life you described, I doubt it. Maybe she’s looking for a way out of her deal? Or maybe she wants to find a way to break the news that she’s a hunter to your Dad, and this is a hunting thing?” 

“So, we’ll do it, right?” 

“Yeah, we’ll do it, but we’re both doing it. You can’t leave them with me to chase after your Mom –“

“I didn’t say –“

“You were thinking it though.”

Dean shook his head. “You don’t need to know what I’m thinking all the time to keep me out of trouble. I’m not a –“

“Demon anymore? I know. It’s automatic. And I’ve got both working with you . . . I know what you’re thinking and how my Dean feels in there, or I think that’s what I’m doing, because I’m searching for him anyway I can . . . What you think, and he feels match up a lot, but not always. I didn’t really notice a dissonance until after – “ 

“I stabbed you?”

“Yeah.” He slumped a little, so I added, “If you want my honest opinion, I think he’s why you were so pissed off after –“

“See, he gets it. He knows what I did –“

“That’s not what I mean . . . Yeah, he adds a lot to your self-loathing, except for him, it’s just loathing. But what I was meant was after what you said the night before that. I think why you were pissed off all night was because he was pissed off with you, and you thought it was you being mad at me.”

“Because of what I said about Rogue?” 

I nodded and looked down at my pizza. “I think he knew you meant what you said before that, and that’s why you took what I said about going to war with you so badly. That shouldn’t have pissed you off so much. I’ve been saying it the whole time. What you said before that pissed him off, because he feels like you’re trying to replace him, and you misinterpreted it as you being pissed off with me . . . And then when you said what you did about Rogue . . . That’s what really set him off. I think maybe before that, he thought you weren’t serious about erasing her . . . Like maybe you were just learning how to live a normal life from your parents, but you’d do the right thing in the end if it came down to it, but when you said that . . . I think he stopped thinking you’d do the right thing, and you saying we’d just have more if she disappeared proved to him that you’re trying to replace him. He’s okay with you two working together to do the right things on this mission and maybe by me, but when you’re not, he’s going to fight you on it.” 

“So, I need to learn when I’m really pissed off and when he’s pissed off with me?” I nodded, and he slowly exhaled before slumping back in his chair. “What I feel for you is –“

“Both of you . . . What you feel is genuine, but he’s why you feel calm and at peace with me when you are . . . I think maybe . . . maybe when you were a demon, you gave Chuck an idea, and he ran with it, so my Dean could help stabilize you with the Mark . . . I don’t know if it’s permanent, but it’s a solution as long as you have it.”

“Workin’ great so far.”

I glanced up at him with a smile and said, “Yeah, actually it is. How unstable do you think you’d be after leaving Sam behind without my Dean?”

Dean reluctantly nodded to concede my point, so I changed the subject. “Anyway, you have to stay here and help me babysit. What if your parents really are on a honeymoon? Do you really want any part of spying on that?” He got a deer in headlights look before he shaking his head and throwing all of his attention into the pizza again. _Yeah, I thought that might work._

\------------------

A week later, I watched John and Mary drive off. _‘What if they don’t come back?’_

Shutting the door, Dean responded to what I’d thought. “Nah, neither one of them would do that . . . couple weeks tops.” 

I looked at the baby Sam in his arms. He was so tiny. “Good, because it would be really hard to explain to our adopted kids why that Dean has grown up looking exactly like you.” 

“You really think we’ll be here that long?”

“Hope not. I’d prefer to retire in a post-Apocalyptic universe I know.” 

We walked into the living room to figure out what to do with the kids now, and he asked, “What if this is it though? I mean . . . what if you can’t get back there?” 

I went from watching the kid Dean showing off his fire truck to looking at the grown up Dean. “My universe is on the up. Seeing the downfall again . . . I’ll do it and save as many as I can along the way, but it’d be good not to have to go through that again . . . Starting over is hard.” 

“In a different universe, or with me?” 

Hadn’t actually meant for that to have a double meaning, but if he wanted honesty . . . “Both.” 

Taking a deep breath, Dean nodded, like it made sense. “It was fine when you thought he might come back, but now that you know I’m not getting rid of the Mark, and I’m all there is, I’m –“ 

“No. It’s not that at all. It’s not really about you. It’s . . . I worked hard for that life. I gave everything I had to it. I can’t just let it go and start all over again.” 

Dean got up to put Sam in one of those baby chairs with wheels, and said, “Least we’re on the same page.” 

_Are we?_

“Yeah, I mean I can’t let my old life go with Sam . . . the two of us together on the road, fighting monsters . . . That’s the way it was supposed to be. Guess I figured I’d go out fighting alongside him, and now he’s gone . . . and I mean I lost him before, or I thought I lost him when he went in the cage, but it feels different this time. He’s not dead and locked in a cage with Lucifer, but I know that after the crap I gave him about not looking for me when I was in Purgatory, he won’t stop looking for me this time. It’s going to ruin his life, and if this is really it, then I don’t want that for him . . . I had this whole other life that I may have screwed up over and over again, but I put everything I had into it, and . . . it started disappearing when I got this Mark, and now it’s gone, and I have to start over somewhere else . . . if I’m being really honest, we’re on the same page.” I think that’s something I really needed to hear. It made me feel better to know I wasn’t alone in that.

\---------------------

“You’re sure about this?” 

_Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?_ “If you’re giving up your room, so they can have it, why shouldn’t I give up mine too?” 

Dean looked confused. “Yeah, see, you make it sound fair, but you’re the one who ends up on the couch, so it’s not.” 

_I don’t really mind –_

“I know you don’t mind, but if you really didn’t think the couch sucks, you wouldn’t mind if I slept on it either, or you’d agree to being on it every other night, but you won’t even do that . . . How about this? How about neither of us sleeps on it? I mean if it’s because you’re trying to keep the different apartments thing going . . . I’m not gonna touch you with you still looking a little like a beat up piñata.” I laughed, and he added, “And if you don’t want me to feel like a complete dick for kicking you out of your room, it’s the only option.” 

_Nice try._ “Think of letting you sleep up here as an apology. You aren’t going to want to give my room back.” 

He grinned before he looked around my room. “Why? What’s so great about it?” 

Looking at the bed, I answered, “Have you actually looked at my bed?” From the look I got, I’d say that was a ‘no.’ “I think you’re about to find out how big of a bitch I really am.” 

He went to inspect it and said, “So, it’s memory foam, what’s –“ 

“Well, memory foam mattresses won’t come onto the market for close to another decade, but it’s not a memory foam mattress. It’s a hybrid . . . it’s the perfect mattress and really expensive for a king . . . plus there are the sheets . . . top of the line –“ 

He finally looked at me. “I knew you were secretly using that time spell, and how expensive? All this talk about you needing a job and us being on a budget, and you were holding out on me?“

I gave him an apologetic look. “Uh, I don’t have a whole lot left . . . I uh –“ 

He relaxed. “You always have back up cash just in case?” I nodded, so he said, “And you needed it after what happened last week?” 

_Yeah, I hurt too much to sleep, but –_

“Okay, so how the hell did you get it here if . . . You dragged it around yourself. You should’ve told me. I would’ve done it . . . except you didn’t want me to feel like it was my fault you had to get it.” 

_Yeah, mostly, but –_

“It was after what Mom did, but that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t done what I did . . . And you knew I’d think that. You’re such a liar. I knew it was worse than you let on . . . Well, now I’m definitely not sleeping up here unless you do.” 

_But I don’t want –_

“That’s the only way I’m agreeing to it now . . . if you want this to be fair.”

The next morning, I heard a massive ruckus and shot up into a sitting position before I was really awake. I looked to my right, and Dean was sitting up too. “Did one of them just fall down the stairs?” 

Dean started to get up and said, “My guess is he threw something down the stairs to wake us up. Probably wants something . . . I’ll take care of it. Go back to sleep.” 

I didn’t know if I could now. I didn’t hear any crying, but what if it was because – I listened to Dean talking out in the hall, and he didn’t sound like one of them was dead or too hurt to cry. I looked back at my pillow. No, I couldn’t sleep now. The shot of adrenaline had woken me up, so I got up and headed into the bathroom to take a shower and wake up even more before heading downstairs.

Apparently, they’d wanted breakfast. Dean was holding a cup of coffee, like a lifeline and said, “We should take them somewhere and tire them out, so they take a nap later, and then tire them out some more, so they go to bed early.” 

_How very domesticated of him._ “Yeah, I’ll think of something while you go take a shower . . . Have you eaten?” 

I watched them with their box of cereal, and he said, “Not yet.” 

“I’ll make us something?” _How very domesticated of me?_

When he didn’t say anything, I looked at him, and he said, “Nothing . . . It’s just . . . It’ll get easier,” before he kissed me on the forehead, and then looked awkward about it, like he didn’t know why he did that, and took off upstairs. 

I have no idea how my life got here. It’d been easing in this direction since we got to this universe, and I’d been going along with it and not going along with it at the same time, and I didn’t think I could do this or be this. I didn’t do normal domestication, and I wouldn’t force myself to do it now.

When Dean came down, I hadn’t made anything for us to eat. I wasn’t really hungry, so it’d slipped my mind I guess? “What are you guys doing?” 

_Destroying the house._ “Going to Mars.” He looked around the room, and it wasn’t too bad yet, but it was going to be a mess by the time I was done with it. “Phase 1 is building a space shuttle, so I’m going to go get more supplies. You guys can work on the space shuttle and paint it, and they’re going to need paper mache helmets for when they get out of the space shuttle. While you’re doing that, I’ll go set up Mars upstairs. They can take a nap down here in their space shuttle after launch, since it takes a long time to get to Mars, and they can have dinner in there, and then they can see the red planet when they go to bed tonight?” 

He seemed a little wary. “This is the start of one of your hurricanes, isn’t it?” I couldn’t help but smile, and he breathed out a laugh before he slumped in resignation. “All right . . . You think you can get everything you need in an hour?” 

_Better make it 2. That way you’ll be surprised when I make it back in less than that._

I got them lots of things, like sheets, cardboard boxes, crates, scissors, glue, lots of paint, pipe cleaners, aluminum foil, colored paper, balloons, newspapers for the paper machete helmets, and other arts and crafts kinds of things. While they worked on that, I snuck up to Dean’s room with the other things I’d gotten. 

After the first big thuds came from upstairs, Dean came up to investigate, but I wouldn’t let him in the room. “It’s my room, Beth . . . If you’re wrecking the place, I wanna know what I have to do to fix it.” 

_There’s no fixing this._

“I heard that . . . What are you doing, so I at least have an idea of what I’m looking at here.” 

_Can’t ruin the surprise._ “Working on something my Dad would be proud I’ve done?” 

He laughed and said, “That doesn’t help . . . When can I see it?” 

_Uhh_ “When they do. Of course that means you’ll need a space helmet too . . . better get working on that.” 

I waited for his response, and finally he said, “So, that’s it? You’re just gonna be up here all day?” 

_Not all day._ “I’ll come down for launch. I’ve got something planned for that.” 

He muttered, “Yeah, I bet you do,” before he turned to leave, and I got back to work.

At around a quarter to 2, there was a knock at the door, and Dean said they were ready for launch, so I came out and pushed him away from the door to keep him from seeing into the room. When I got downstairs, I was impressed. They’d done a really good job with the space shuttle. It was the right shape, and it’d fit all 3 of them comfortably. The sheets were on the outside to make it white, and they’d painted it to look like one. Plus, there were three sets of handprints in different colors of paint all over the outside, and inside, they’d put up more white sheets under the cardboard boxes that were giving it shape. Then they’d used foil and put control panels and other things like that in there. Kid Dean was pretty excited about it and showing me what everything was. That probably meant that adult Dean’s inner child felt pretty much the same. 

“Where your guys’ helmets?” 

Dean started looking awkward at that for some reason. “I, uh, well, they’re on Earth now, so they don’t really need them, and I thought if they wanted something to do while they’re flying to Mars or whatever, maybe they could make them on the way there.” 

_You want me to get you started?_ He nodded, so I smiled and said, “Okay . . . We’ll launch using foam fire extinguishers for effect, since carbon dioxide extinguishers get too cold, and a real fire’s probably not a good idea. Then they can take their nap, and we’ll get started.” 

After Dean got them put down, he came to watch me in the kitchen. “How do you know how to do this? I mean I did it in school, but I was like 6, and that was with paste. I didn’t see any in the supplies you bought. Didn’t even think about the flour and water thing.” 

I plastered another strip of newspaper around the balloon and said, “Dad and I used to do it a lot, and I still do it with some of the smaller kids I teach in some of my classes.” 

“So, what’s making you feel okay with home-life is bringing something Gabriel used to do with you into it?” 

_Yeah, I guess . . . and being a teacher too. I always liked that._

“Seriously, what are you doing to my room?” 

I smiled. “It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, and I don’t think they’ll have a problem staying in their room, but that’s all I’m saying. I don’t want to ruin the surprise. I should get back to it if I want to have it done in time.”

\-------------------

“Okay, keep your eyes closed until you hit the lights.” Dean turned them off, and you could see hundreds of little stars on the walls in different colors. I’d put up black wallpaper, so I didn’t have to worry about poisoning them with paint fumes and made my own glow in the dark paint to get the different colors. Overall, there wasn’t much paint that went into making the stars considering the size of the room, so I figured it’d be okay. I also figured it’d be okay if I just used the same constellations in our night sky, because I didn’t know what the angles were for those on Mars. 

Going over to one of the stars, I pointed to it and said, “Here’s Earth. You can tell it’s a planet, because it’s a different color than most of the others, and you can tell it’s Earth because it’s a little brighter and bigger than the rest.” I went back to turn the lights back on, and pointed up, so kid Dean would look at the ceiling. There was sort of a yellowish-beige shag carpet tacked to the entire ceiling, so it looked like the room had been turned upside down. “The sky on Mars is a little different than on Earth, so it doesn’t look blue. It looks kind of yellowish.” 

He smiled, and then I bent down to pick up some red rocks from the ground. “And the ground is red like this. That’s why it’s called the red planet.” I’d gone to the future to get lots and lots of bags of rough and smooth red stones of different sizes and shades of red from landscaping places and had dumped them out all over the floor, so no matter where you looked, you couldn’t see a spot that wasn’t covered in them. 

Kid Dean smiled again and bent down to pick up a few rocks and then let them fall from his hand onto the ground the way I was. Then I stood up and took his hand, so I could show him the sandbox I’d made in the corner. “Martians like to play in sandboxes. You have anything like that on Earth?” 

He nodded and answered, “Yeah, but we don’t have them in our houses,” and I heard the adult Dean say, “No. We don’t.” 

Ignoring adult Dean, I bent down to pick up a handful of the red sand. “You think Sam will like it?” The kid Dean nodded really fast, so I said, “As long as you two don’t get it in your beds, or take it out of Mars, then it doesn’t matter where it goes while you’re in here,” before I dumped my handful of sand onto the ground outside of the sandbox, and kid Dean grinned. 

Then I took him over to orangish-red planter boxes along the wall, and knelt next to them. “I know the back of your spaceship had bags of dirt from Earth, and that’s a good thing, because Mars doesn’t have the right kind of dirt to grow plants, and Mars doesn’t have the same kind of food you do on Earth either, so we’re going to have to learn how to grow them here, and . . . how to collect water . . . all day tomorrow I’m going to teach you Earthlings how to survive here.” 

The kid Dean smiled again. “You’re from Mars?” 

Pointing to my face, I answered, “I’m a little yellow and green still, so I thought I’d play the Martian.” 

Grinning, he whispered, “Sam thought we wouldn’t have any fun here because we’d be too sad without Mom and Dad.” 

_Sam thought that, huh?_ “Yeah, well, it’s my job is to make your life fun and a little easier for you when you’re sad. Just remember what I teach you tomorrow when you get older, and I’ll make sure you have fun learning it, okay?”


	77. Navigating a New Life

“No, I’m not singing that.” 

Kid Dean quickly asked, “Why not?” 

Sighing, Beth answered, “One, I don’t want to sing, and two, that’s your Mom’s song.” 

In response, kid Dean crossed his arms over his chest and said, “I’ll be sad if you don’t,” and Dean laughed. Should’ve never told him it was her job to make his life easier when he was sad. 

“I’ll sing one I used to sing my daughter.” 

Kid Dean uncrossed his arms. “Am I going to like it?” 

Beth smiled. “Probably not. Didn’t say my job was to make your life perfect. It’s a David Bowie song called Life on Mars. It’s hard to sing quietly and still have it come out right, so it’ll probably sound bad, but tomorrow we can spend all day listening to David Bowie, and you can see how it should sound . . . Martians love David Bowie . . . Perfect for space travel really, especially Space Oddity.” 

As soon as she was done putting them to sleep and closed the door behind her, Dean asked, “What are you doing, Beth?” 

Stepping away from the door with a smirk, Beth answered, “Trying to indoctrinate you to like Bowie more than Zeppelin in this life?” 

He smiled. “That’ll never happen, but go ahead and try . . . No, I mean what are you doing, as in I’m still trying to figure out what today was all about. Why is my room turned upside down and full of a truckload of rocks when we’re only babysitting them for a couple of weeks?” 

Her eyes darted off to the side while she thought about how to answer that, and then she looked back up at him. “You wanna know what ‘normal’ is for me? Normal is breaking into the Tower of London after hours . . . It’s going exploring with my camera and probably doing dangerous things to get photos. It’s developing those pictures, so I don’t get in trouble for taking them. It’s saying that it’s okay to have a paintball gun tournament and go zip-lining on Christmas. It’s playing ice hockey and sledding down mountains. It’s finding an adventure every day, and today that adventure includes finding a fun way to teach the little boy in that room how to survive an Apocalypse we may not be here to help him survive. I’m hoping that going to Mars will make an impact he’ll remember . . . A ‘normal life’ for me isn’t about getting into a routine, and it isn’t about waking up and dreading the day because of work or because you have to look after kids, and it isn’t all about work and paying the bills and being responsible and boring and tidying things. I can do that for a day or two, but there’s only so much I can take before I start fighting against it . . . I’m sorry if -” 

Before he really knew what he was doing, he was kissing her again, but he wasn’t even remotely sorry for doing it. The first time she didn’t smile into a kiss or her lips didn’t respond if she wasn’t in a smiling kind of mood or her tongue didn’t play with his or her hands didn’t pull him closer, he’d back off, but none of those had happened yet.

It’s like they were in a ring circling each other, and sometimes he’d go on the offense, think he was in with a solid chance, and she’d dodge and counter with an attack he didn’t see coming, and sometimes they’d both come out swinging, and sometimes they had a moment of clarity and realized they were on the same side, and other times, this happened. He was good with this happening more. Kissing her was good, really good, but he didn’t want to push it until he figured this out. 

He wanted to know that how he was starting to feel about her was coming from him. It felt like it was, but how was he supposed to know? And he wanted to know she wasn’t just going along with this, because she really wanted a guy who was gone, maybe acted as his conscience, and looked like him. About the only thing he knew right now was that if what she just said is what she had to offer him, he’d sign on the dotted line. A partner that made his life fun and the hard times a little easier sounded pretty good right about now. 

He pulled back, and she looked like she’d come back for more if he let her. That was a good sign, so he smiled, and she said, “Thought you had a no piñata rule.” 

“I’d say your more of an attractive Martian now.” 

She smiled, and he thought that was a good sign too. “So, you’re not too mad about your room?” 

No, he was ecstatic. Meant he had an excuse to stay in her bed. “Well, I guess that’s what I get for handing my room over to Gabriel’s daughter.” Yeah, he’d thought that might score him some bonus points, and it definitely did. Shouldn’t push his luck. If he went on the offense too much, she’d hit him with one of those counter attacks, because she didn’t have this whole thing figured out either. “So, what do we have to do to get ready for tomorrow?” He hadn’t thought that would score him more points, but it had. Maybe he’d get the hang of this.

\-----------------------------

He didn’t think it was possible to love a bed, but he did. Everything about this bed was perfect, the sheets were soft, not scratchy, and they were clean and smelled clean, and the top quilt or whatever it was felt like you were pulling a protective cloud over you, and it wasn’t girlie or frilly or too hot, and the mattress was awesome, so were the pillows. Just climbing into this bed made him feel happy until he started thinking about Sam and the Mark and other things he didn’t really want to think about but did until he fell asleep, which he did, because this bed was so damn comfortable. 

He felt the same kind of happiness at waking up in this bed that he did when he got into it, and that was a pretty good way to start the day. Waking up the way he did this morning was a new one. There was lots of space in this bed, so they’d been able to stay on their respective sides without any awkwardness. He wasn’t going to complain unless she did, since she’s the one who pulled his arm around her. 

Their Marks didn’t seem to have the same kind of effect they used to have, like the shocks when he touched her and feeling sick around her were gone, so being this close to her didn’t bother him. It was kind of nice, and so was not having to get up and take care of two kids. His parents came to pick them up last night, and since it was a weekend and Beth didn’t start working again til Monday, they could sleep in, or that’s what he was planning to do. Didn’t really know what she had planned. Was she going to get up now? 

He leaned over her to try and look at her face, so he could see if she was asleep. That’s what it looked like, so he pulled himself a little closer and curled into her more. If she was good with this, then he was good with this. Or he was until he didn’t know how long later when he heard her say his name sleepily, and it woke him up enough to realize his lips were gently kissing the back of her neck. How long had he been doing that? Where was his hand? It was okay. She was still hugging it, so he wasn’t being too much of a sex pest in his sleep.

“Hey, Beth? You awake?” 

“Mm hm.” 

“What do you want to do today?” 

She was quiet, and he thought she’d gone back to sleep until she said, “I want to go on a hunt.” 

Resting his forehead on her shoulder, he sighed. “You saw that?” 

“Yeah.” 

He’d been here for over almost 6 weeks, and he hadn’t killed anything yet. Started coughing yesterday, and there’d definitely been blood there, not much, but some. “Thought you didn’t mind if I was a demon.” 

She was quick to say, “I don’t, but you do, and also there’s the whole, I don’t want you to die thing.” 

“You find one?” She filled him in on what she’d found. 6 kids over the last 6 months had vanished into thin air. “That’s a pretty big hunting ground. Could be a person.” 

Measuring the size of her hand against his, she shook her head briefly. “It’s not.” 

She’d already been researching it. “How much of that time spell stuff do you have?” 

Beth intertwined her fingers through his and answered, “I didn’t use it for this. I saw the article in the paper, so I bought it, called the newspaper to find out more about the reporter. I thought maybe I could ask him a few questions. The article was a reprint, so I went to the library with the kids to find the original article yesterday, and flipping through that paper, I came across a familiar face a few pages back.” 

Now he was really interested. “Whose?” 

She waited a beat and answered, “The same bitch that killed my Dean . . . the aswang. She was in the background of one of the photos. She looks exactly the same.” 

“You’re sure it’s her?” 

“Yeah, I wouldn’t forget her . . . You have to chop off her head and then stab her in the heart . . . Well, I hacked off her arms before I stabbed her in the heart, and then I set her on fire. I don’t think that’s strictly necessary, but she didn’t come back . . . little trickier than your standard kill.” 

It was so weird being able to talk to her like this, like a normal couple laying in bed together, talking about their plans for the day, except their plans were to kill something. He could never do this with Lisa. “Can you actually hunt this aswang and let me take the kill?” 

She shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.” 

\----------------

Running out of the trees in front of Dean, the aswang stopped when it got a good look at him. Beth came out of nowhere behind it, and since it’s attention was on him, it didn’t see or hear her at all. “Beth! No! Go get the kid.” 

She stopped mid-swing, glanced at him, and then ran back towards the house. The aswang took off in the opposite direction. It was strong and fast, but he was stronger and faster, so he caught up to it and threw it into a tree. It got to its feet and bared its teeth at him, but it wasn’t fast enough to attack before his hand went to its throat to hold it against the tree. Cutting its left arm off, he did it for an entirely different reason than why Beth had probably done it, but he liked the idea. Making this last as long as possible, so it knew what was coming without being able to do anything about it sounded pretty good right now. 

Keeping it pinned against the tree, he leaned down and hacked off its left leg in two whacks, and then shoved it over, so it’d fall on the ground. He let it struggle to crawl away from him with one arm and one leg. It got maybe 12-feet away and almost to some brush before he walked up to it and kicked it over onto its back. He took his time cutting off the other arm before looking down at its pain-riddled face. _Leave the leg._ She was his for the taking now. Dean took almost as much time taking her head as he had the arm, and then sat back and used his knife to stab her in the heart. Once or twice didn’t give him what he needed, so he stabbed her a few more times, but it still wasn’t enough. He needed another kill. He wanted another hunt. There had to be another one near here they could do. 

Catching movement out of the corner of his eye, Dean turned to see Beth storming towards him out of the trees to his right. He looked down at the body of the aswang, and maybe it’d been overkill. He’d let it take over. He shouldn’t –

Beth went right past him and punted the head into the nearest tree, ran up to it, and started stomping on it until he picked her up and dragged her away. “Thought you were going to give me a hard time about – “ She looked down at the body and shook her head. “Kid didn’t survive?” 

She slumped. “She won’t. I told her I was going to get my partner and the car, so I could close her up and take her home. She won’t surivive what’s missing, and there’s no way they have transplants of what she’ll need or a way to treat any kind of infection she’s picked up . . . All a hospital could do is help her with the pain, and I can do that. The drive home is a couple of hours . . . I want her to see her family again.” 

He let Beth go, and she kicked the head back towards the body, squirted some lighter fluid on the corpse, lit a match, and tossed it on the pile without looking back. He put a move on throwing the arms and leg in with the rest of what was burning, because he wasn’t entirely sure that Beth was stable enough to deal with this by herself. 

The first thing he noticed when he came into the cabin was that it reeked of death. There was blood on the table and the floor under the table. Beth’s back was to him. She had a syringe and was talking to a girl layed out on a table in front of her. “This will take most of the pain away, but not all of it. I could give you more, but this stuff makes you sleepy, and I know you want to see your parents, so I can’t give you enough to get rid of all the pain, or you’ll go to sleep. Do I have your permission to give it to you.” The girl blinked once, and Beth smiled. “You’re doing a great job, Tammy. You ready?” 

The girl blinked again, so Beth gave her the shot into a vein she’d tapped out on the girl’s arm, and the girl’s face and eyes relaxed a few seconds later. Beth took the tourniquet off and asked, “Can you still hear me, Tammy?” One blink. “Does it hurt anymore?” Two blinks. “I’m going to put you back together again now. Is that okay?” One blink. “If it hurts at all, you start blinking, and I’ll stop and give you a little more before I do anything else. Okay?” One blink. “Dean, can you watch her eyes?”

The girl was maybe 12 or 13. Beth was blocking his view of her torso, but from here, she looked healthy. Was there really nothing they could do for her? Clearing his throat, he said, “Yeah, is . . . what’s missing?” 

Beth took a deep breath and calmly replied, “Most of her digestive tract is gone, so stomach, large and small intestines . . . one of her kidneys . . . pancreas . . . female reproductive organs, and she’s been open like this a couple of weeks.” 

“Thought you just found the article.” 

“I did. A small town reporter started putting two and two together after Tammy was taken about an hour from where the first kid went missing. He figured out the hunting grounds crossed 4 state lines, so law enforcement hadn’t made a connection yet, but it took him a couple of weeks to put it together, write it, and then for the larger newspaper to pick it up. There was an appeal for more information on all the kids, including Tammy. That’s how I know her name.” 

“She’s blinking.” 

Beth stopped and looked at Tammy. “Does it hurt?” Two blinks. Watching her, Beth finally said, “You can’t see him, and you want to know whose voice that is?” One blink. Beth smiled. “You knew he was in charge of watching you blink, and that was the best way to get his attention, right?” One blink. “You’re a very clever girl. Let me get you covered up a little, okay?” One blink. 

As soon as Beth pulled out a few more thin paper sheets from her bag to put over the girl, she looked back at Dean to let him know they were ready, and Dean went around to the other side of the table. “Hi, Tammy. I’m Dean.” Tammy’s eyes looked from him to Beth and then back to him before she closed her eyes. “What’s that mean?” 

Beth’s head tilted to the side while she watched the girl, while she worked it out. “Are you wondering where the blood came from?” One blink. Beth looked at him and nodded for him to explain, while she went back to sewing the girl closed. 

“Uh, well the monster that had you. I made it so she won’t be able to hurt you or anyone else again.” 

The girl’s eyes teared up, and she blinked a couple of times. Was that because she was crying or because she wanted him to know something? “Are you telling him thank you?” One blink. “You want him to hold your hand?” One blink. 

Beth looked up at Dean and nodded towards the girl’s hand, before she let him know what she was thinking. _”Talk to her. She likes softball, swimming, and Queen, or that’s what the paper said. Don’t look sad. That isn’t what she needs. You can be sad later.”_

Taking a deep breath, Dean took Tammy’s hand and said, “So, I hear you like Queen?” There was a slight glint in her eye, and a single blink. “My favorite band is Led Zeppelin, but I like Queen too. How about I go through my favorite Queen songs, and you tell me if you like them?” One blink. 

He wasn’t sure how it was possible, but he was in the middle of arguing over whether or not Queen or Led Zeppelin was better with a girl who could only blink when Beth finished. “You ready to get out of here, Tammy?” One blink. “I’ll get you dressed in some of my spare clothes, and then Dean is going to carry you to the car. He’s going to drive, because he’s a really fast driver, so you’ll be sitting with me, but I’ll make sure you can still see him, and I’ll tell him what you’re saying, okay?” One blink.

Beth went to grab some clothes out of her bag that she must’ve put in there when she went to the car, so Dean used the opportunity of her being away from the girl to say, “I don’t know if I can do this, Beth.” 

Looking up at him, Beth whispered, “You can . . . You have in another life many times, and I’ll be the one holding her . . . The important thing is to keep her calm, make her feel safe, and if she can’t hold on until we get there to let her know that’s okay.” 

He looked over his shoulder at the girl. “You think maybe I should stop and get a Queen tape on the way? Think they sell stuff like that in gas stations now.” Beth smiled and said she thought that was a great idea. Yeah, he could do that.


	78. Know Thine Enemy

“It hurts?” 

Yes. 

“I’ll give you another – “

Tammy squeezed my hand, and I relaxed a little. If she could move, then her body would do what it should and shut down. “I know you don’t want to fall asleep before you see your parents, but I can give you the same amount I gave you the last time, and the pain will go away again.” 

Slight nod. 

_Damnit._ I reached over her to grab what I needed from the first aid kit to give her another shot of morphine and gave her a little more than I did last time, because this was going to be excruciating. I could give her enough to stop her heart, but I wanted her to have enough time to make peace with this first. 

Dean looked at me in response to what I was thinking. _Yeah, it’s coming._ He looked at her and got a determined look on his face before picking up a lot more speed, and he’d already been going fast.

“Tammy, you can still hear me?” She gave me another slight nod and opened her eyes again. “You know how when we met, I told you that I’d tell you the truth no matter what?” She nodded before she teared up a little. _Yeah, I know._ “I think it’s great that you’re starting to move, because it means you’re getting some of your freedom back that the monster took from you.” She nodded, but I could tell she knew it was coming. “But the more your body wakes up, the more it’s going to start noticing the things its missing, and it isn’t going to want to keep working without those things. You won’t have a whole lot of choice in it . . . You’ll feel a lot more pain. You’ll start feeling cold, and your vision will get big black spots in it . . . and eventually, your body will stop. It’s important for you to know that when that happens, you have to let go . . . You can’t stay behind and see your parents.” 

A couple of tears fell down her cheeks, so I wiped them for her before I said, “But that doesn’t mean you won’t see them again. It just means you won’t see them on Earth.” That grabbed her attention. “You’ve seen monsters, so you know they’re real. Know that Heaven is real too.” She was watching me pretty intently, and that was good, because I wanted her to believe me. I didn’t want her to have any unfinished business to keep her here. 

“Dean and I will get your body to your parents, so they won’t wonder what happened to you for the rest of their lives. Your parents will be sad, but if you don’t go to Heaven the way you should, it’ll hurt them even more, because you’ll become a ghost, and you’ll haunt them. It’ll make them sadder and miss you more if they can feel you and don’t see you. They’ll think they’re crazy. It might drive you crazy for them not to see you or to see the pain they’re in without being able to help them. You could even start attacking them or anyone else who moves into your house, because you’ll be stuck there long after your parents are gone. You have to let them go and wait to see them again in Heaven.” 

“You want to know a secret about Heaven?” She nodded, so I said, “Heaven is like re-living your favorite moments . . . or being in your favorite place or doing your favorite things and seeing your favorite people, all the time . . . forever. When you’re in your Heaven, there might be something that doesn’t belong there, like a picture or a cup or a snag in the carpet. If you pull on it, a door will open, and you’ll see a white hallway. People’s names and birthdays and the days they died are on the doors to their own personal Heavens, so when your parents get up there, you can find them that way and go into their Heavens to see them in person . . . Until then, you can watch them while they’re on Earth . . . There are places up there you can go . . . the angels are supposed to watch Earth from them, but the angels are busy doing other things most of the time. If you go into those rooms, at the back, in the right hand corner of the room, there’s a square in the floor that looks like . . . ice. It’ll let you see people on Earth, and you can find your parents if you know where to look. Whatever hall your Heaven ends up being in, go right, down to the end of the hall, take a left, and it’ll be the first room on your left. If the angels find you, they’ll just take you back to your Heaven, and you can try again. They don’t usually stick around the human part of Heaven for long.” 

She was starting to sweat, but she smiled a little, like she wasn’t sure if I was messing with her. “You know how I know that?” She shook her head. “My Dad’s an angel, so I grew up in Heaven.” 

Dean finally broke his silence to quickly say, “It’s true. Watch her eyes.” 

He wanted me to tap into my soul, so I looked Tammy in the eye and said, “You watching?” She nodded, and then I shut everything I was feeling down, which wasn’t hard to do, because I didn’t want to feel like this. She took a deep breath before she nodded again to let me know she believed me, so I relaxed and let it go. She watched my eyes go back to normal and then brought her hand up to touch my face. I held her a little tighter and said, “It’ll be okay, Tammy. You let me know when you’re ready to let go, and I’ll take care of it. You’ve suffered enough. You don’t have to suffer anymore.” 

She looked at the radio, and I smiled. “You want to listen to Queen some more?” She nodded, and maybe 15 minutes later, her hair was soaked in sweat, there was a steady stream of tears coming down her face, and she was writhing in pain until I got her to go back to just focusing on me and my voice and tried to be as soothing as I could be. She calmed down enough to let me know she was ready, so I took care of it the way I told her I would. She kept her eyes glued to mine the entire time. As soon as she was gone, I closed her eyes, and made Dean pull over, because I needed to get out of the car.

I just needed to collect my thoughts. I needed to figure out what we were going to do now. I needed to bring my hands up to the back of my head and put my elbows up in front of my face, so I could focus on taking slow deep breaths and not falling apart. Suddenly Dean was there and wrapping me up in his arms. I was relieved he didn’t say anything. There’s nothing he could say. 

We stood like that for a minute or two before I said, “I want to quit my job. I want to do this . . . I -” 

He stroked his hand down the back of my head and said one word. “Okay.” 

Holding onto him a little tighter, I added, “We need to take her back to the cabin and phone it in to the local cops, so they can find the other 5 kids wherever they are on the property, and I know this is a federal case with it crossing state lines, but we need to figure out a way for me to be in on the autopsies.” 

Another comforting petting motion to the back of my head, and another, “Okay,” and I couldn’t keep myself from crying anymore.

\------------------

“You’re sure about this?” 

_Not 100%._ “It’s Sunday in the Bible Belt in the early 80s. They might look into finding the other bodies near that cabin using sniffer dogs, but they aren’t going to do any autopsies today.” 

Dean followed me into the morgue and said, “Yeah, I actually meant the –“ He pointed one of his fingers around his eyes, I assume to ask if I was going to start crying again, and I flipped my sunglasses down. 

“That was last night. This is now. I’m good. Are you? You can stay in the car if –“ He got an annoyed look on his face, pushed past me to open the door, and took us to guy on the desk. 

“I should call the Medical Examiner. We didn’t think you guys would be showing up until tomorrow.” 

Cocking my head to the side, I responded, “No need. It’ll be less messy if he’s not here to question everything I find. I’ll leave him my reports. He can do all his second guessing tomorrow when it’s not on the government’s dime.” 

The guy looked at Dean. “Oh, I thought . . . You’re not the –“ 

Dean grinned. “I know how it looks, but you don’t really think she’s here to protect me, do you?” 

The guy relaxed before he gave him a ‘good old boy’ smile and said, “No, I suppose your right.” 

Nodding towards the rotary phone, Dean said, “You could call your boss, but she’s good, or she wouldn’t be working with us . . . Problem is she’s not great with people unless they’re dead . . . a real Morticia if you know what I mean.” The man looked at me, and I kept my cold exterior up. He looked back at Dean and nodded, so Dean smiled again. “And I’m guessing your boss isn’t the kind of man that’s gonna like her coming in here and telling him what to do on his turf, but he won’t take it out on us . . . He’ll take it out on you . . . And you probably weren’t even supposed to come in today, am I right? Yeah that’s what I thought. After everything that happened last night, they called you in, and now you’re sitting here when you should be at home relaxing . . . You’d be making it a whole lot easier on yourself if you just let her do her job without him.” 

That got us in the door. I bypassed Tammy, because whatever the Aswang had given her had worn off. I wanted to find out what that thing used to keep them alive, in pain, and paralyzed. I went over to the other body they’d found after our anonymous call and took some vitreous fluid from the eye; some for me, and some for the medical examiner, even though I doubt they looked at that much in the 80s in small towns like this. Maybe it’d make the M.E. think he should.

I looked at the boy’s chest cavity, and it was packed with dirt from having been buried. I collected some of the soil for me in case I needed it, and some for the medical examiner. Then I took Polaroid pictures of marks and abrasions over every inch of the kid’s exterior, and collected any hair or fibers. I wanted to do some DNA sequencing on the hair in a future that could do it. 

Next, I used my black light to see what I could find on his skin, took samples where needed and used the shower head above him to wash him off. I was meticulous in taking better photos of the abrasions and bruises and anything I missed because of the dirt. Then, I got rid of the dirt in his chest cavity, so I could see what was missing. _Everything . . . Maybe._ I cracked his head open to see if he still had a brain. _Yep._ It was pretty decomposed, I dissected what was there and took photos of everything as I went, so I could document anything that looked unusual or missing. 

I had to know why the aswang insisted on keeping the brain if she ate everything else that wasn’t skin, muscle, eyes, or bone. If it was just to keep the body going, machines could do that without a brain, so I was guessing that her paralytic could do the same if it kept the bodies alive long past when they should’ve been dead. Why leave the brain untouched? Why make them aware of everything that was happening and make sure the pain centers of the brain were dull, but active? Did it make the rest of the body taste better if the right hormones were continuously being secreted? Then why take the thyroid and pancreas and other organs that secreted hormones? The only main secretory organ left in this boy was the one in the brain. 

Because of decomposition, it was hard to tell if anything had been enlarged in the brain prior to death, so I took some pituitary tissue and a few other parts of the brain and snap froze them in a canister of liquid nitrogen that I’d gotten last night. I made a note about it for the medical examiner, so he knew what I’d taken and could do the same with what I left behind before I labeled and froze the sections of the brain for him to look at when he had the chance. 

My conclusion by the end was still inconclusive. I had to test this vitreous fluid in a university lab in the future to see if I could find the chemical compounds she used and maybe see if there were any hormone changes I could find. I also had to get the right kinds of dyes to stain the tissue and look at it under a decent microscope. Couldn’t imagine how scared this poor kid must’ve been the whole time, and then in his final moments . . . I knew that he died when the aswang took his heart. I didn’t understand it . . . the lungs couldn’t do their job of oxygenating the blood. Maybe she took those and the heart at the same time? It was a puzzle I had to understand, and I had to understand it, because I was going after her and any aswang I came across in every timeline. I needed to know my enemy.

When I was done, I pulled the sheet up to his neck, put his hands over it, so it looked like he was comfortable, and then I taped his eyes closed, so he looked clean and like he was just asleep. He was still grey and in the early stages of decomp, but it’s the best I could do. Then I went over to Tammy and made her look moderately comfortable, but I couldn’t do anything with her arms. Rigor had set in. When I was done, I turned to grab my stuff and remembered Dean was there. “I, uh – “ He looked at my canister and the bags I had and asked if I got everything. “Yeah.” He stood up and headed for the door.


	79. Taking It Slow

Dean’s palms were a little sweaty when he started the car to take them home. Beth was making a little nervous. He had no idea how she did what she did last night, and he had no idea how she did what she just did. 

Last night she’d been gentle, kind, and above all else, calm, even when she was giving the girl that last shot, she’d been all of those things. Unless you were listening to the words she’d been saying, you wouldn’t have known she was talking the girl through dying and then killing her or that any of it was getting to her at all, but then as soon as the girl died, it was like the walls broke down, and the very human Beth came out flooding out. But those walls . . . before he and Beth had even gotten back in the car, she’d started rebuilding them again by making plans. 

She hadn’t stayed in the motel last night. She’d spent all night off on a mission getting ready for the autopsy today, and then by the time she did the autopsy, all those same walls were back in place, like they’d never broken down. That kid had been like a science experiment to her, but then at the end, she made the kid look human again. She was making Dean nervous.

“You’re going to find a way to track them using science?” He’d been listening to what she was thinking back in the morgue. It was the only way to gauge how she was really doing, but how she’d looked on the outside was how she’d been on the inside. She’d been all business, not an ounce of emotion. She nodded, so he said, “But this isn’t science.” 

“What about your EMF reader? Didn’t somebody somewhere decide to use science to find a way to track the shifts in energy created by spirits?” He relaxed a little and tried not to smile while he focused on the road. For some reason that made him feel better, like she wasn’t just cutting kids up for no reason. “I’m not the only one who was going to dissect him. I guess I knew why he died, so I didn’t have to do it, but I did leave a lot of notes and photos and gave tips from the 21st century. Maybe it’ll make the M.E. better . . . If I was intense today . . . See, usually, I enjoy the morgue, because I like figuring out the puzzles, but today I was more driven. I’m sure I’ll let myself enjoy it once I find a signature we can use to find others.” 

He glanced at her before he went back to watching the road and smiled. “Guess I was right about you being Morticia.” 

She went from looking out the window to looking at him and said, “I usually get called Wednesday.” He smiled again. He knew that. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that, but she was a woman, not a little girl. He was sticking with Morticia.

\-----------------------

“Was it enough?” 

Dean rolled over to look at Beth. She was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. Must’ve woken her up with all his tossing and turning. “It’ll never be enough.” 

She turned her head to look at him and said, “I know that, but I mean . . . you’re not coughing anymore?” 

Not that he’d noticed. “No, but . . . it feels like it woke something back up, and it’s searching for its next fix.” 

Rolling to face him, Beth said, “I’m not sure about you being a weekend warrior.” 

That’d been his suggestion. If she wanted to go back to full-time hunting, he wasn’t going to stop her, but he’d thought maybe she could research cases from home, go do investigations during the week, and that he’d join up with her on the weekends for the hunts. He thought it was a solid plan. “Why not?” 

“I know it puts you on something of a schedule, so you can try to control it, but it’s way too reminiscent of lunar cycles or something. You’re not a monster. I don’t want you to treat yourself like one, and I don’t want you to just come in on the hunts, because I don’t want you to start thinking you’re only good for killing. I don’t want you to work all week, jonesing for the weekends just for that either. I also don’t want to put in all the work, and then have you steal it at the end.” 

He smiled briefly. “How much of it’s that last one?” 

She glanced off to the side for a couple of seconds, while she thought about it, and then looked at him again. “Like 15% . . . Just trying to be honest, so I threw it in there.” 

Honesty was good. “What do you think I should do then?” 

“So, how does it work exactly? Is it like when you kill something that’s more powerful, you get a bigger fix, but it also makes you have to find the next hit sooner, and you aren’t sure when the next one will send you over the edge?” Yeah, he guessed that was a good way to describe it, so he nodded. “You could kill fish for a living. They’re pretty weak, or you could –“ She laughed before she said, “Stop laughing. I’m being serious. You could spend all day – “ 

She smiled into the kiss, and his hand slid across her side to her back, so he could pull her closer. A minute later, he was rolling her under him. Maybe 10 minutes after that he pulled up abruptly in something of a panic he tried to hide the best he could. “I can’t . . . the Mark . . . it’s gonna get worse . . . I already -“ 

Looking up at him, Beth breathed out, “No pressure, Dean . . . we can be best –“ 

His lips slammed over hers again. He didn’t want to be best friends either. This felt too right, and it felt too good. He didn’t want to stop. That was the problem. They were at a point where he knew if this went on much longer, they wouldn’t stop, and if he slept with her, then he couldn’t go back, and he didn’t want this thing on his arm to kill her. And what if it wasn’t permanent? What if her guy came back when the mission was over, and she had to choose? There was no choice. He’d already almost killed her twice if you counted the time he threw a knife at her when he was a demon. 

Her legs wrapped around him before she flipped him onto his back. Her lips reconnected with his before he could say anything, but she slowed everything way down, the kiss, the way her body moved against his, the way her hands slid up his arms. When her hands got to his hands, she held them down with a little bit of force and breathed out, “Just enjoy it . . . I’m not here for one tonight . . . no pressure,” against his lips before she came back to him. She let his hands go when she knew he had calmed down and was back in the moment, so he flipped them again, but he kept it slow and sensual instead of intense and fiery the way he’d had it. 

When things started heading back into, ‘he wanted her out of her clothes, and he wanted her out of them now,’ territory, he looked down at her and said, “If you’re not here for one night, then how long are you here?” 

“That’s a trick question. There is no right answer other than I won’t be here for one night.” 

How was it a trick question? “So, not forever then?” 

She smiled before saying, “Well, we both know it won’t be forever, because I’ll die some day.” 

Yeah, he guessed she would. Then they’d both be alone. He was assuming the sudden panic he felt at the thought of that was coming from her guy. “So at least two nights?” 

She looked around at their surroundings and said, “Well, this is my bed, so I’d say I’ll be here at least two nights.” 

“I don’t know. Think this is my bed, since you wrecked mine.” 

It made her laugh. “Your bed’s fine. It’s just on Mars.” 

No way was he going back to that bed. “Well, if it’s on another planet, I can’t use it, and you sent it there, so this is my bed now.” She said she wasn’t giving her bed up without a fight, so he said, “Who said anything about you giving it up? I’m just saying that it’s mine.” 

She smiled again. “Well, as long as I don’t have to give it up, that’s fine. You can carry it around when we go to another timeline.” 

He watched her for a few seconds and brought the tone back down. “You’re okay?” 

She didn’t look like she knew what he was talking about and then did, so she must’ve gotten it from what he was thinking, because even he knew it’d come out of left field. “What do you think?” 

He didn’t know. “I’d say those walls are shaking pretty hard.” 

She shook her head. “If they are, I can’t feel them. I mean it’s not going to break me. I know I did what I had to do, but I don’t feel very good about it, and I feel worse, because I was able to give her time I couldn’t give Corey . . . Same monster, two totally different endings. Corey knew his family was gone. I didn’t have to talk him into dying . . . I asked him if he wanted me to end it, but I already knew he was ready . . . and then the aswang reanimated itself and stabbed Dean, and . . . I tried to be as compassionate as I could be, but Dean was dying on the floor, and I don’t think I kept my cool the way I did last night . . . and I didn’t have morphine, so it was abrupt, but less peaceful.” She sighed before adding, “I’ve killed a lot of people, Dean.” 

Yeah, she had. When he was a demon, he’d zeroed in on those, and as a demon or a man, he mostly thought, ‘job well done.’ “Same situations, I would’ve done the same thing.” She started to shake her head, and Dean said, “The guy you know didn’t, because he either wasn’t there, or you wouldn’t let him. Why is that?” 

She didn’t know, or she didn’t want to say? She was blocking him from knowing what she was thinking all of a sudden, so he guessed it was probably the second. Eventually she said, “He may not have had the Mark, but he fought the same kind of inner demons you did before you got it . . . a lot of it came from Hell, but some of it was there before that . . . and while the people I’ve killed may need to die for various reasons, I didn’t want him to think that he did it because the dark part of him was taking over and making him something he isn’t . . . or for him to feel the guilt I know he’d feel or the self-loathing that generally goes along with that.” 

“So, let me get this right. You think your job is to make his life fun and a little easier when things go wrong?” She nodded, so he said, “Why do you think the other you and Colette did their job, and you haven’t?” 

She didn’t like that question, but she still answered it. “I made his life harder . . . pretty much every step along the way.” 

Dean wasn’t sure if he should say it. No, he couldn’t. What she’d said about her Dean had definitely touched a nerve, and her Dean really wanted her to know that wasn’t true. What he wanted to say was that maybe that was because she should’ve been with him and not her Dean. To him it seemed like that prophecy in her universe that said she’d lead the righteous man away from the darkness of Cain was more about him than her guy. Her guy hadn’t had the Mark and was never going to get the Mark . . . until now. Now part of him was pissed at him for even thinking that . . . probably her guy again. 

“Nah, I’ve seen what he would’ve been like without you . . . same Apocalyptic scenario, just a little different, and there’s no way he would’ve survived that the way he did or been the man he was if it weren’t for you.” He had a lot of things to figure out about him and her and her guy, but he knew that was true.


	80. Making Plans

I woke up breathless and feeling really good, and then I realized why. “Dean?” 

He stopped kissing the back of my neck and groggily said, “Hm?” and then about 2 seconds later, “Sonofabitch,” before he jerked his hand out of my shorts. “Oh god, I’m, uh, it was the Mark? I was asleep.” 

_Seriously? We’re going with the Mark made me do it?_ “So, the Mark that wants you to kill suddenly decided that it wanted you to –“ 

He rolled to sit up on the other side of the bed. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The other morning, I woke up kissing you too.” 

I laughed again and said, “Well, don’t stop on my account,” before I rolled over onto my back to look at him. 

“No, I want to do this right . . . I refuse to do the back and forth thing with you that he did. What if it is the Mark? What if it makes me kill you some night while I’m asleep.” 

Nah, I didn’t think this had anything to do with the Mark. Apparently, now he was good with a chaste, over the clothes, second base and leaving it there while he was awake, but the rest of him wasn’t. Was my Dean a part of that? Who knows? Dean told me one time that when I was asleep he got to talk to the real me, even when I didn’t remember the real me, so maybe. “I think maybe your subconscious has decided it’s going to push ahead without you.” 

He looked back at me over his shoulder. “You know there’s just me, right? I know you keep thinking of us like two people, and . . . I tried to be, but I’m not . . . And I know it’s messed up. I was a demon too, so there’s your Dean, and you seemed to like the demon, and now there’s me, and you know me, but you don’t . . . I need to give you time to adjust to that, and maybe I need time too, cause I’m not sure how to do this.”

“You did it with –“

“Lisa was different. She was the dream, but the dream isn’t the reality, and you don’t know that until you get it . . . maybe things would’ve been different if it’d been under different circumstances, but I wouldn’t have gone to her if they had been different.”

_I don’t think I know what that means._

“I know you don’t. All you’ve ever had is him. I have a lot to live up to . . . and I don’t think I can.”

“Except he –“

“He is and he isn’t me . . . He’s what I could be, but I’m not . . . He’s the dream, and I’m the reality.”

“Oh. For you or me?”

Dean hung his head and muttered, “I don’t know . . . Both? Should probably go live on Mars.”

“I thought we cleared up that this was your bed and that I’m not going anywhere, so it’s our bed . . . Just put a pillow or something between us tonight if you’re really that worried about it.” 

His gaze flitted back to me. “You trying to tell me if I don’t want to do the back and forth, I should stay?” 

“Mostly, I was just trying to find a solution, so I don’t have to sleep on Mars, because I couldn’t make you give up this bed when you seem like it so much.”

“See, I don’t know if you’re saying that to him or me.”

Sighing, I said, “Well, you’re the one I see sitting here, so I guess I’m talking to you.”

Lowering his eyes, he nodded again. “Yeah, we’ll try it your way tonight . . . Right now I’ve gotta go get ready for work, and you’ve got a job to quit.” 

\-----------------

I spent the rest of the morning running errands in the future with those samples I took from the aswang case, quitting the hospital job in person when I was done, and then driving around finding every local, regional, state, and surrounding state newspaper I could. There was a knock on my door not long after I got back around noon. “Uh, hi . . . He keeps talking about how he needs to check on his plants on Mars, and since you’re home, I thought maybe . . .” 

I smiled and looked down at kid Dean before pulling the door open, so they could come in. He went sprinting up the stairs, so I looked at Mary and said, “Yeah, I, uh . . . It’s probably easier if you see it yourself,” before I took her up to show her the room.

“What is this?” 

_Mars._ “Umm . . . well, see . . . they built a space shuttle, and it needed somewhere to go, so why not Mars, and then I thought it might be a good survivalist training set up, so those are his plants. He’s got potatoes and peppers and tomatoes and pumpkins, and a few other things that have essential nutrients, and this planter has a tree. I was trying to explain how trees take in carbon dioxide, and give us oxygen, and this is a home made water collection and filtration device, so he can water them. “ 

Mary put Sam in the sandbox before she went over to watch Dean taking a bottle of water that’d collected from the air over the weekend, so he could water his little vegetable garden.   
“This is in case that future you two saw happens?” 

“Yeah.”

She looked back at me. “No trees? It was really that bad?” I nodded, and she said, “What else?” 

_Have I done here?_ “You can’t see it now, but when it’s dark and the lights are out, the constellations for this time of year are painted on the walls . . . star charts, so he can get used to them and be able to find his way around by using them at night, and I was thinking that depending on whether or not you want them to stay here the odd night, I can change them for the autumn.” 

Pointing at something else, Mary asked, “What’s this?” 

“Something the grown up Dean came up with . . . It’s kind of like a windmill generator. There’s no wind in here unless the windows are open, but they can spin it, and it makes that lightbulb light up. He’s good with things like that.” 

She spun it a few times and smiled when the lightbulb came on before she moved onto something else. “Traps . . . for more food, I’m guessing?” 

“Yeah, ones you can leave if it’s not safe to wait around for them to be sprung or if you’re running low on ammo . . . Every other night, or every third night, we were throwing stuffed animals in there that had fruit roll ups taped to them, so they didn’t get used there being something in there every morning when they woke up, but still wanted to check.” 

Looking around her eyes fixated on something else. “What’s this?” 

I looked at the bullseye target. _Uh oh._ “Target practice.” 

Running up to her Dean said, “Watch this, Mom,” before he went over to get his little toy dart gun. She sighed, and then Dean took up a perfect stance, lined up the shot, and hit the bullseye. It was really impressive for a 4 year old. 

“What’s that for?” 

Dean looked up at her with a big grin. “Bad Martians.” 

Mary gave me a little look before she asked, “And who are bad Martians?” 

Dean smiled again. “They don’t like David Bowie.” 

She laughed and relaxed a little. “David Bowie, huh?” 

Dean nodded before he went over to the record player in the corner and looked to me for help, so I went over and picked up a few records, while I explained. “Space Oddity and Life on Mars seemed fitting for space exploration . . . Plus, every adult Dean I’ve met has Led Zeppelin down as his favorite band, so I thought one that liked David Bowie more would set him apart, but Dean picked these Zeppelin albums up to swing him the other way, and it seems to be working.” 

Looking around the room again, Mary said, “What else do I need to know?” 

Uh. There was one other thing. “What are angels, Dean?” 

Dean looked up at me and recited, “Some of them are good, but most of them are bad, and you can’t believe any of them.” 

Yeah, I know she said angels watched over him at night, so that warranted the frustrated sigh she gave me, but I quickly said, “And how do I now that, Dean?” 

Explaining to his Mom, like it was the most normal thing in the world, he said, “Her Dad is an angel.” 

Mary looked from Dean to me to see if that was true. “His name is Gabriel . . . He’s an archangel. Maybe you’ve heard of him.” 

Sitting on the bed, she took a long slow breath. “And Michael and Lucifer . . .” 

I nodded. Gabriel’s daughter had been looking out for Michael and Lucifer’s vessels while she was away. “But I don’t have grace anymore, so I’m not a nephilim. Obviously I take a beating just like any other human would.” 

She looked around the room again. “You really think this is necessary?” 

“I think that your sons need to be prepared, because no matter what happens to you, they wouldn’t have been born if the angels didn’t expect them to fulfill a very specific purpose. They need to know not to become vessels, and they don’t have to grow up to be hunters, but they need to know how to survive in any situation. This is one way they can learn that.” 

She stood up and went to go pick up Sam, saying, “We should probably get going, but . . . I want to talk to you and Dean tonight . . . I have some things I need to say.” Okay. This should be interesting.

\---------------------

“Tell me about where you’re from. Dean said something about there being an Apocalypse there too.” 

“Well, what do you want to do know exactly? How it happened, or –“ 

She shook her head. “No, I’ve heard enough about that to know what happened. Tell me about what it’s like now. I’m guessing the things you’re teaching my son must have come in pretty useful there.” 

Oh, yeah. I told her about the Wisconsin camp and how it was set up and about the farmers and how they were doing things, like with the cheese manufacturing, breeding programs, greenhouses, and what they were planning on expanding their operations to include as soon as they could. I told her about the bakery, clothing, fishing, and game hunting camps, and I told her about how Kansas was going to do ammunition manufacture and eventually weapons and about how Iowa was going to focus on farming and Colorado was making medications. I told her about the electricity and how it was only in Iowa and Colorado right now. Iowa was done the hard way, but my Dad set up Colorado for me, and all the other camps were run on diesel, wind and solar generators, but we’d be expand the Iowa electricity to include Wisconsin and South Dakota as soon as we could. 

Then I told her about our camp in South Dakota and how it was a hunting camp. I gave her a layout of what it looked like and described the kids who lived there. I explained about what their lives were like on a day to day basis and about the school, the classes we offered, how I taught mine, and about the after school training. I told her that Kansas and Wisconsin had schools too, but we needed to find a way to get all the kids learning the same things, so we had to work on finding enough teachers to do it and get them together once a year to go over lesson plans together, and we had to figure out what to do about college. Finally, I told her about the things the handful of us hunters had to do, like deal with New Orleans and the hybrids.

When I was done, she looked at Dean. “And you agreed to go with them?” 

Looking at me, he said, “I was a demon at the time, and it sounded like fun,” before he smiled briefly and added, “I wouldn’t change it, but I wouldn’t have left without Sam.” 

“Would you have really brought your brother there?”

“I think it’ll be good to start over somewhere that can’t be screwed up worse than it already is, somewhere that I can actually do some good again, and with the things Sam was doing to find me, I think he would’ve needed somewhere like that too . . . The Sam that’s with us thinks that maybe with things the way they are there, we’ll be able to make it a monster-free universe, and maybe he’s right with that computer they’ve got. They’re down to about 20 vamps in North and South America . . . Angel numbers are way down. Hell’s numbers have to be way down too. The Leviathan have been rounding up the Croats, and now that the Leviathan don’t have a leader, they can move around and take out more in other parts of the country. I know you don’t want to hear it, but . . . me and Sam are the best hunters on the planet when we’re not making decisions that bring on Apocalypses, and having more of us in one place . . . I think we might actually be able to do it.” 

She asked Dean if he was happy being a hunter. Dean sighed and gave it some serious thought. “I wouldn’t say I’m happy, but I’m the best at what I do.” Pulling up his sleeve to show off his Mark, he added, “I can get by if I know I’m doing more good than bad, and this is making it hard right now, but this weekend we went on a hunt . . . and it reminded me why I do this. It’s to save people. Gets lost in all the rest sometimes, but that’s why, and it’s something I have to do.” 

Mary looked at the stack of newspapers in the kitchen she’d obviously already noticed. “So, you’re going back to hunting?” 

Dean looked at me again and answered, “Beth is researching and investigating full-time during the week. I’m gonna help out on the weekends.” 

Sitting forward with her elbows on her knees, Mary said, “Okay. I think I’ve heard enough. I haven’t told John anything, and I’m not going to, but . . . if anything happens to me, I want you two to fill him in on things, just maybe not about you being our son from a different universe. He won’t believe it, and I need you to stay close and help him keep an eye on my boys . . . I don’t want him doing it on his own. If he wants to go out there and search for answers, then I want them to have a stable home, or something resembling a stable home where they’ll be safe. And regardless of what happens to me, I want you to take my boys with you when the time comes for you to leave.” 

“When they die, they won’t – “ 

Mary looked at me and said, “They go nowhere, I know . . . Some people find comfort in thinking they’ll go nowhere when they die. That’s what I want them to expect, and if there is something like Death’s lockup waiting for them, then maybe it’ll come as a surprise. At least there, they can be surrounded by all of their favorite things. This destiny the angels see for them here . . . It’s already been done in your universe, so if they’re growing up there, then there won’t be Hell or angels or any of the other things that are supposed to happen to them. They may grow up to be hunters, but they’ll be in a group of 1000 other kids who are learning the same thing, so they’ll fit in and have friends, and they won’t have to be isolated.” 

“They’re too young to –“ 

Mary cut Dean off while she looked at me. “Who made the decision that Rogue should come with you on your mission? Was it her?“ 

I shook my head. “No, I did.” 

Mary nodded. “That’s what I thought . . . a parent’s consent works, and I’m giving it.”


	81. One Step at a Time

Dean watched his Mom get up and walk to the door. As soon as she was gone Beth asked, “What just happened?” 

He wasn’t entirely sure. “Think we just talked ourselves into babysitting them for life.” 

“What a Mom . . . I mean she’s totally right.” When he looked at her, she explained. “We’ll try to stop Azazel from doing anything to Sam in a couple of months, but even if we can’t, Azazel isn’t in my timeline, so he can’t come after Sam when he gets older. Kid Dean will never go to Hell and be the first seal . . . Ruby and Lilith are both dead. Lucifer and Michael are both dead. Raphael is dead too . . . We aren’t closing the gates of Hell, so Sam won’t go through the trials, and none of the things after that will happen. They’ll have a totally clean slate, and she’s willing to give them up to make sure they have it.” 

“But what about her? What about Dad? Why not bring them with us?” 

Beth shook her head in confusion. “I don’t know. I have no idea what she’s planning, but I really want to know what she did during those 2 weeks they were gone if she wasn’t filling him in on hunting, and I don’t buy that it was just a honeymoon. Did your Dad say anything about it?” 

“No.” Hadn’t gotten anything out of him, because apparently his Mom didn’t want word getting around about where they went for some reason, and Dean hadn’t really pushed him on it too hard because he didn’t want to hear too many details he really didn’t want to know. His Dad had been in way too good of a mood all day. It did seem like his Mom was up to something though. Maybe he should push harder tomorrow.

“I also think what she just said should’ve sent us somewhere else.” 

Yeah, he got that too. “You think that means we’re here for good?” 

“No . . . I don’t. I think this is another job, and maybe . . . I don’t know. I kept thinking it would happen eventually, that we’d get split up. Of course I thought I’d get split up with my daughter, but . . . maybe we got done training as a group on the universes we knew the futures to already, and now we’re onto the harder ones, like this one that doesn’t seem like any we’ve seen . . . a little like my universe. We won’t be moving on until we figure it out.”

He had no idea how she could have any hope left. “Why do you think that?”

“Well, it’s what we spent 13 years training to do . . . change Fate without knowing what that Fate was. I’m paired with you. My Dad knew what was happening during our training, but he knows more about things in general anyway. Maybe the solo-Dean got paired off with him and Rogue. Cas didn’t train with us, but he’s been around for a long time too. Maybe he got paired off with the Purgatory team.” 

“What’s he gonna do without his grace?”

Beth sighed and reached under her shirt to pull out a vial and said, “You mean this grace that started jumping universe to universe with me after you joined our team?” 

Yeah, that’s exactly what he’d meant. “Why didn’t I know you had that?”

Beth glanced at him and answered, “Why would I tell you when you were a demon? Probably would’ve broken it to see if you could make me more like you. And since we’ve been here, I started wearing it again . . . makes me feel closer to him, since I can’t exactly carry my angel blade with me everywhere. He’ll be okay . . . As a hunter, he’s up there with you and Sam as one of the best on the planet even without it, and like I said, he’s been around for a while . . . Plus, he’s gotten his own kind of training on how to think for himself and do his own battle strategy in our universe. The next time we see him, maybe he’ll want it back, but I doubt it. I think the next time he sees us, he’ll just be happy to see his family, his real family that takes him as he is, angel or not.”

Dean hoped she was right for her sake. “You find anything today?” 

Beth looked towards the kitchen table and said, “Maybe something in Oklahoma . . . You wanna see it?” 

They went into the kitchen, and she pulled a newspaper out of one of the stacks. Looked like a local paper. “Did you drive to Oklahoma?” 

Flipping the paper open, she shook her head. “No. I might’ve stolen some of the papers from a couple of libraries, but you’d be surprised how much variety you can find if you go to the right places to buy them.” 

He stepped behind her and reached towards the stack on her right, so he could flick through it. There were some from South Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas, more from Oklahoma, and a lot in Kansas. That one was from Colorado. No way places sold those near here. “You used the time spell –“ 

“You’re obsessed with that time spell. I used it right after you left this morning to take those samples to a lab in the future . . . I might’ve been there for a day, but after that, I came back and drove around to find all these.“ 

Slipping his arms around her waist, he said, “I don’t like it.” 

“You don’t like what?” 

“You were gone a whole day, and I didn’t know. I don’t like it. Thought you weren’t here for just one night.” 

Beth leaned back into his chest to try and look up at him. “I’ll be here tonight, so it doesn’t make any difference to you.” 

But it did. “Yeah, but you’re a day older than you were when I left this morning. You could be gone for weeks or months or years, and I wouldn’t know it . . . Something could happen to you, and I wouldn’t know . . . I wouldn’t know how to find you. I don’t like it.” 

“So, you want a note?” 

He definitely did not want a note. “If you and me are on the same page, then you never have to leave me a note. I don’t want you to do it without me.” 

She was quiet for a few seconds and then said, “Okay, I won’t do it without you, but what if there isn’t time to tell you I’m going to do something? Shouldn’t I leave a note then?” 

No, he wasn’t her guardian. The only time he ever left notes was when he wasn’t planning on coming back. “What are you going to be doing that I won’t know about already?” 

“I don’t know, like when Ben called during the outbreak, I had to go get him, and nobody was there, so I left a note.” 

That was an extreme case. “You think something like that is going to happen here?” 

She shrugged. “What if something happens to a neighbor, and I have to take them to the hospital, but you’re at work?” 

“You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?” 

“If we’re laying ground rules, then I want to get them right.” 

Ground rules? “I don’t want ground rules. I think you have teamwork issues, and you’re trying to find loopholes.” 

_”Teamwork issues?”_

“Yeah, you have no idea how to be in a team. I’m not someone you have to hide anything from. You might want to do things I don’t like, but I’m not going to tell you not to do them. I’ll do them with you . . . unless I know they’re the wrong, and then I’ll tell you I think they’re wrong, and if you still do them, I’ll probably be pissed about it, but do them with you anyway.” 

Beth looked back up at him and said, “And you’re an open book? You’re going to tell me everything that’s going on with you, like how things are with the Mark, or what you’re planning, or things you’ve done without me?” 

“Yeah, as long as you stick to it, I will too.” 

“Think it’s going to be harder than either of us thinks right now.” Maybe, but if they wanted to build up trust, it’s the only way they could do it. 

\------------------

Dean heard her exhale his name, and it woke him up enough to know it was still dark, so he had a few more hours. He was going to go back to sleep, but then he realized what he was doing, and his eyes flew open. _Fuck!_ He rolled over onto his back and exhaled a frustrated sigh. “The pillow didn’t work.” He sat up to look for it and found it thrown on the floor on his side of the bed. Landing back on his pillow, he added, “I think there’s something wrong with me. I don’t do this.” She rolled over to look at him, so he said, “I’m not kidding about it being the Mark . . . or not the Mark, but what if it’s what I was before coming through?” 

“You mean the demon?” Yeah, that’s what he meant, so he nodded. 

“I don’t understand why you’re making such a big deal about this . . . not the feeling me up in your sleep. I get that. I mean what is it with you guys and sex. You’ve had it hundreds of times with lots of different women . . . It’s –“ 

He rolled to look at her and said, “It’s you.” 

She exhaled a sad laugh. “At least one of you have finally said it.” 

No, not like that. “Can’t explain it . . . just feels like . . . a contract with you, like it’ll make you mine, and it’s hard to wrap my head around, because I’ve never thought that about anyone, and it feels wrong to think that, but that’s the way it feels. I think I knew that’s what it was when I was a demon, and that’s why I signed on the dotted line as soon as I could, because I wanted you, and I still want you, but I’m me again, and I want to get this right, because someone else already has that contract with you, and I want to do better than him.” 

“What’s your side of it?” 

His side of this contract? “I don’t know, but I think it’s why when I was a demon, I wanted you to know I wanted you the way you are and that I didn’t think anything was wrong with you. Probably why I wanted you to have fun and keep you from being a prisoner. And even as a demon, I knew I was yours, and it didn’t bother me unless I thought about him coming back . . . mostly thought that was bullshit, and I’d have to find a way to lock him up without killing him, or it’d kill you too.” 

“I promised him –“ 

“Yeah, I know. You promised him you’d never leave him, and that he could come back when he wanted. It’s part of the freaking contract, and it’s part of the problem, because I don’t know if you’re still trying to keep it with him, and that’s why you’re with me, or what’ll happen when he comes back. It’s not like he’s ever kept his side of the contract with you, except for like a few months here and there, and he got to leave on a freaking high . . . I need to know before I sign it as me that I can let you go back to him if he comes back even though it pisses me off. I need to know that I can still be what you need and honor my side of the contract even if we’re not together . . . and I need to know that you’re all in with me and not holding back for him or are only with me because of him. But saying that doesn’t mean I’m doing what he has always done with you. There isn’t going to be any back and forth. I’m not going to wake up in the morning and say I didn’t mean anything I just said. I’m not taking any steps back with you. I’m just taking them slow and making sure I get them right.” 

Right now was a pretty good time to show her what he meant, so he kissed her, and made sure they had as much fun as they did last night, and then no more than that even though it was really freaking hard. Didn’t really help that he woke up in the morning to her saying his name tiredly again and found that his hand was up her shirt, but at least it wasn’t heading south of the boarder without him again. Maybe he’d said what he needed to say to get this at least partially under control? 

Trying a different tactic, he said, “You want me to stop?” 

She breathed out, “No,” and he said, “You know I don’t mean that it’s going any further than-“

“Dean, I want you to do what you want with me in whatever way your comfortable . . . but that kind of killed the mood, so . . . “ 

Oh. Right. Was she annoyed? She sounded annoyed. Didn’t really have time to get it back. “I, uh, I’ve gotta go get ready for work.”


	82. Learning to Hunt with a New Partner

“What the hell was that?” 

_What the hell was what?_ “Did you think I’d just stand around and let you take every single kill?” 

Dean looked at the dead skinwalker by his feet. “That was mine.” 

_Was it though?_ “Clearly not, or you would’ve killed it.” 

His eyes narrowed before he said, “Do you think this is a game?” 

_Uh, I take it you don’t, so I probably shouldn’t say, ‘yes?’_ “I think my strategy for killing it worked better than yours.” 

“What was your strategy? Hide and wait to take the shot before I could?” 

_Well, I didn’t hide._ “I knew where it was going, so I got here at the right time. The aswang was a freebee, because you were coughing up blood. You’re not now, and I actually know what I’m doing, so if you want to get the kills, you’re going to have to work for them, because I’m not putting in all the time on research and investigations just to stand around and do nothing for the hunts . . . and so help me God if you don’t stop looking at me like that, I’m going to use my tranq gun to put you down for a nap.” 

He blinked a couple of times before he shook his head and turned in a huff, so I torched the body to get rid of it, and then went after him. When I caught up to him, he quickly said, “I think you have a problem.” 

_A problem? What problem?_

“Think you get off on killing as much as I do. Why the hell else would you need to kill that skinwalker before I could?” 

That was ridiculous. “Nope. Couldn’t care less about the kill. Beating you to it . . . I’m all over that.” 

Looking down at me over his shoulder, he exclaimed, “We’re on the same side!” 

_And?_ “So? I –“ 

He stopped walking and said, “You’re not supposed to play against me!” 

_Really? No, I’m pretty sure I am, because we’re supposed to be playmates._ “You’re just saying that because you lost. Beat me the next time, and you’ll feel better about it.” 

I certainly paid for it later that night. The car ride was awkward, and then as soon as we got back to the motel, he took off again, so I went to bed. I don’t know when he came back, but I woke up to him crawling over me. He tasted like whiskey, so he’d probably been at a bar. We could’ve had some really great sex, because I think he was up for it, but I stopped him after it started to go past what he was comfortable doing when he was sober, because it’s not what a sober him would’ve wanted. 

I respected his wishes, but . . . it was making me sexually frustrated in a way I wasn’t used to being. Usually, if my Dean was in one of his ‘we’re off again’ phases, there was nothing there to make me frustrated. No kissing or touching or anything like that, so I was able to live with only the occasional regret popping into my head when he did something nice. This was totally different. I think I was going to have to start taking a lot of showers.

The next morning, I rolled over to an empty bed, so I went to take a shower to loosen up. When I got out, he was back with breakfast, so I grabbed an éclair and went to put my socks and Converse shoes on. The drive back to Lawrence was going to take a while, and I didn’t feel like wearing my boots. He didn’t say anything, so I said, “I was thinking we should do hunts that won’t get done now that you and Sam won’t grow up here or because I was never supposed to be here. Obviously there are some that won’t work, because the monsters aren’t monsters yet, or they’re in unknown locations right now, but a lot of them will if they’re monsters or spirits that were confined to a specific area for a long time before we found them.” 

When I looked up, he was watching me. Snapping out of it before it got weird, he nodded and went to go start packing his stuff. “Have any in mind?” 

One, but I didn’t want him to be a part of it. I’d definitely be swinging by Hibbing at some point in the near future, but for now . . . a hunt in the right direction would do. “There’s that Jeepers Creepers scarecrow in Burkitsville. If we get rid of that, we could save 44 people over the next 22 years.” 

He looked down while he thought about it. “The next sacrifice won’t happen ‘til April. You got anything closer you want?” 

Not particularly. I wanted to get closer to Minnesota without it looking like that’s what I wanted. “I don’t know if any of the hunts I was on in states near Kansas have what I hunted yet . . . Well, maybe there is a Two-face hiding out in the Ozarks. I mean it had to have migrated from the Plain States before they became states, so maybe that’s where it went, and that’s why nobody’s seen one for so long. There are some Ogres in Colorado, but they could be anywhere along the Rockies right now. There are some mermaids off the coast of Texas, but they only do their breeding thing every 10 years or so, which means they’re probably out to sea right now. There’s a goddess in Arizona that might be in Mexico right now. There are plenty of spirits near here. The asylum in Rockford has been a problem since the 60s.” Illinois worked even better than Indiana.

Sitting next to me, he said, “Two-face?” 

Yeah. “Also known as Double-face or Sharp-elbows.” 

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know, they’re usually found a few pages ahead of wendigos in crappy lore books for civilians. Why don’t I remember ever seeing you hunt one?” 

_I haven’t done it yet._ “If wendigos are in those same books, and they’re real, then why can’t a Two-face be real? Ogres are real too by the way.” 

He watched me for a few seconds before saying, “A Two-face in the Ozarks? We were just in the Ozarks for that aswang.” 

_I know._ “That was in the Ozarks of southwest Missouri. The aswang was probably there to conceal its crimes by being near multiple state borders. It was hiding in plain sight amongst people. The last time I saw a Two-Face monster, it was smack dab in the middle of the Boston Mountains in Arkansas where nobody lives.” I took a bite of my eclaire, and he watched me. What? I wasn’t making it up. “Cas’s computer is really good. I just never got a chance to do that hunt, because I was stuck in the bunker doing lame hunts closer to home while I was pregnant. Then more pressing things came up, so I forgot about it and a few other monsters I wanted to check out . . . Plus, there’s proper lore on them in the Men of Letters archive. They’re real.” He still didn’t look like he believed me, so I quickly added, “The Wampus cat is real too,” before I took another bite, and he laughed.

“Next you’ll tell me the Jersey Devil is-“ 

I shook my head. “Unfortunately not. Neither is Bigfoot, but Yeti are. I think maybe myths of them traveled over with early indigenous people who originated from that part of the world, and that’s how the whole Bigfoot thing got started here.” He kept watching me to see if I was messing with him, so I said, “That last one was a lie. Yeti aren’t real. They’re probably bears that are mistaken for giant apes when they start walking on their hind legs.” 

“So, you want to hunt this monster in the Ozarks?” 

Maybe. It’d move us in the right direction. “I guess that depends on whether or not it’s been killing people. It’s into cannibalism, but I don’t think it necessarily needs to eat people to survive. Maybe it’s going for wild hog, elk, and bear to stay off the radar? If it is, we should probably leave it alone. It’d be like going after a chupacabra for eating goats.” 

He still thought I was messing with him and said, “Then why were you going to hunt it?” 

It was hard to explain, but, “I started wondering how many people in remote places, like the Ozarks, could have survived by going deeper into remote locations near where they lived. Maybe by getting away from Croats and demons, they were pushing into monster territories and being killed. Wild mountain men and women would probably be just as dangerous as monsters to any outsiders, so the idea was put on hold.” 

Dean ducked his head before he nodded. “When you got benched for being pregnant?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Tell me about these ogres. I didn’t see you hunt them either.” 

_But that’s the wrong way. I'd never be able to slip out and be back without him noticing._ “You’d be looking for the same kinds of things in the newspapers, namely missing hikers, but ogers have also been known to snatch people from homes on the outskirts of small towns. Their hunting grounds are at least 100 square miles. There are at least two out there right now, 1 male, and 1 female, but I don’t know if they’ve met or if there are any more than that. There could be. They’re as tall as medium-sized pine trees, and they have a grayish-green hue to them, so they blend in . . . They’re smart, and they have the strength of 10 men. They’re skin is like iron, but you have to decapitate them to kill them.” 

“How do you kill a Two-face?”

“Drowning. Fire has the opposite effect. It invigorates them and makes them more aggressive. The problem with drowning one is you can’t look at its second face, or you’ll get paralyzed, and it goes without saying, you can’t sneak up on one from behind either. Three ogres living together showed up as 1 dot on the computer, so there might have been more than one of the Two-face monsters. I wasn’t able to confirm.” 

“Which one do you think is a bigger threat?” 

_Damn._ “Ogres can only live on people, or that’s what the lore says.” 

Looking back up at me, he said, “So, they’re actively hunting right now, and the Two-Face might not be?” I nodded. “But we have no idea where they are other than they’re somewhere in the Rockies, and you think the monster or monsters in the Ozarks are still in the same place?” I nodded again, and he ran through it in his mind before saying, “Think we should get jobs as Park Rangers-“

“I should get a job as a Park Ranger. You’ve already got a job.”

He looked a little annoyed and frustrated by that and sighed. “Okay, then I think you should get a job as a Park Ranger. You’ll get access to official missing persons reports from either mountain range to narrow it down more.” 

“I’ll get a job in a park near one of them though, right? I mean if I got a job at the Grand Canyon, it would’t actually do us a whole lot of good.” 

He leaned forward a little before saying, “What are you planning?” _Nothing he needed to know about right now._ I’d tell him when the time was right if we were really doing this whole filling each other in on everything thing, but not right now. I shrugged so he said, “You know what? You’re heading to Colorado. Until you tell me why you want the Ozarks, that’s where you’re staying until the job’s over, and then we’re going to Illinois.” Illinois worked better than Missouri for me, so I said okay, because that didn’t bother me one bit. His eyes narrowed suspiciously before he got up to finish packing, but he didn’t say anything else about it.

As we were walking out, Dean stopped in front of me at the door. “You don’t want your coffee?” 

Oh. Uh. “Was that for me?” 

“Well, I didn’t get two for me.” 

Oh. I grabbed it and held it out to him while I said, “You can have it . . . I don’t drink coffee, but thanks,” and then walked past him and out to our stolen car. 

When he got into the car, he said, “Since when?” 

“Since when what?” 

“Since when don’t you drink coffee?” 

I looked at the offending cup and tried not to make a face, because it was really nice of him to get it for me. “Since always. I just don’t like it.” 

He looked confused while he started the car. “But we always have it at the house.” 

“No, you always have it at the house.” 

He still looked confused. “Yeah, because you always make it.” 

Well, it was hardly difficult. “All I do is put the stuff in the machine at night and set it to go off in the mornings. I don’t actually have any. Not even really a fan of the smell of it, except when I was pregnant . . . I liked the smell of it then.” 

We were on the road for about 20 minutes when he finally said something again. “Who doesn’t like coffee?” 

“I don’t. What’s the big deal?” 

He shook his head and kept his focus on the road, and then maybe 5 minutes later said, “We need to talk about –“ 

_Last night? Uh no._ “So, with the ogre, I’ll be in a sniper’s perch. You’ll have to get close enough to take its head.” 

He glanced at me and then went back to watching the road before he sighed. “Thought you’d want to compete for the kill.” 

Not on this one. “I’ll have more control over the situation wherever I am than you’ll have being up close and personal with the thing. To get a knick started in the skin of the neck, a sniper’s bullet is just about the only way to do it. A sawn off shotgun, knife, machete, hatchet, or axe isn’t going to work. I guess a handgun or crossbow would, but you’d have to be up at their height, not down on the ground, and then you’d have to get from the tree to them, which won’t be easy.” 

Suitably intrigued, he asked, “So, you want me to be bait, but I still get the kill? What would I need to do to act as bait?” 

“They have a great sense of smell. It covers something like 1 ½ to 1 ¾ miles on a good day, and they hear as well as a werewolf can, so you can use both of those things.” 

“So, give ‘em something they might want, like weak prey that’s bleeding out alone on one of the trails?” 

That’d work. “Just remember they like to bring their prey back dead, so don’t let it cave your skull in when it finds you.” He glanced at me again, and gave a small nod. Now I just needed to find one.


	83. Building Trust

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” 

He knew he’d royally screwed things up last night no matter how she tried to play it today. “I can do better than what you got last night. Let me make it up to you.” 

“Better?” 

“I know I was clumsy, and I –“ 

“That’s not why I stopped us. It’s not something you want when you’re sober.“ 

Yeah, it was. He just couldn’t let himself have it right now. “I’m sober now. What’s the problem?”

“You’re making me sexually frustrated, and I need to not be if I’m going to hunt.”

Oh. He grinned and asked, “How frustrated?” She sighed and then rolled over to face the other way. “Let me make it up to you.” 

“You can’t make it up to me without making it worse.”

Bet he could. He had to. If he didn’t, he might get friend-zoned, and that’s not what he wanted either. Maybe that’s what was happening now? Fuck. He didn’t know what to do. He just knew he wanted to keep this moving forward and not have it stall out. “Give me another chance . . . just . . . how about . . . I don’t know. I won’t kiss you tonight.”

She laughed and rolled over to look at him. “What? I’m not a prostitute, I –“

“No, that’s not what I meant. Just . . . give me a sec.” He rolled out of bed and went to her weapons bag. Finding the bottle of baby oil, he said, “You know if you want to keep your knives from rusting up, you could –“ 

“I know, but things like that are a little harder to come by than baby oil where I come from . . . I don’t particularly care about my knives, so I haven’t really thought about getting anything better since I left the stone ages.” 

She had everything she needed for guns in here, so why not knives? She had some serious issues with knives. He looked at the bottle before saying he’d have to stock up on a few things while they were here and then told her to take off her shirt and roll over onto her stomach. 

“I don’t think –“

“Just trust me.”

“Have you even –“

“I saw you naked all the time when I was a demon, and I took your shirt off last night, didn’t I?”

“Do you even remember last night?”

Yeah, he did. “I wasn’t that drunk, and you know it. Just –“

“You’ll never be able to –“

“Shut up and let me try it. I’ll back off, and we can be friends if this doesn’t work.” 

Sighing, she then pulled the sheets over her head, and about 10-seconds later, her hand popped out to drop her shirt onto the floor before she rolled over and laid on her stomach. Maybe this was a bad idea . . . No, he could control himself. Could he? He’d find out. He had to or after what he’d just said, it’d be over, and he didn’t want that.

He came back to the bed and crawled over her. It looked like he might’ve gotten a little carried away with biting her shoulder and the side/back of her neck last night, so he decided to start there. He poured way too much of the oil into his hands, and it started dripping everywhere. She laughed when it dripped onto her back, and said something about them still having to sleep on this bed. Right. Did he care about that? He didn’t think so, and this bed was half his. She could just wash the sheets in the morning, couldn’t she? If she cared about it, then maybe he should too? He looked around to see if he could find anywhere better to do this . . . not the floor. Uh, he ran to the bathroom closet to grab some towels to put under her, came back and told her to go back to where she’d been, because she’d put her shirt back on and moved. Why was she making this so difficult? She never made things easy for him.

The second start went a lot better, or he thought it did. He tried to keep his touch light over the slight bruises, and then worked down from there with a little more pressure. He never really took the time to notice when he was a demon, but she had a nice back. He took his time getting down to her shorts and then had a decision to make. 

_Take ‘em off? . . . What are you kidding, leave ’em on, you’re trying to be good . . . Leave them on for now and work on her arms? . . . Yeah, I’ll stick with that for now. Make sure I have this under control and take it from there._ There was some definition to to her arms, but they weren’t overly toned. Overall, she wasn’t really very muscly. How was she a hunter? “You’re not muscly either.” 

He looked at the back of her head and argued, “I’m not like a bodybuilder, but I’m toned. Got a hell of a lot more muscles than you.” 

“We have the same muscles. Yours are just bigger because you’re a man, but -“ 

“You’re supposed to be quiet, not practicing for the debate team with me.” She breathed out a laugh, but didn’t say anything else.

When he was done with her arms and hands, he moved down and watched to see what she did as he took her shorts off. She let him do it and didn’t complain. Maybe she was giving him enough rope to let him hang himself, but the joke was on her, because he wouldn’t. He had this . . . or he thought he did. She had nice hips too. He really liked her ass. He kind wanted to bite it . . . no, he had to be good. He moved on after a minute or two, and she tensed a little when he got to her inner thigh, but he had this. He wasn’t gonna go there . . . at least not tonight. 

He took his time working the tension out of her hamstrings and calves. Her legs were more toned than her arms were, but they still weren’t really all that muscly. She felt firm, but kind of looked soft all over. “You look soft all over.” 

He laughed and looked up at the back of her head again. “Stop talking. You’re supposed to be relaxing.” 

“Well, then stop critiquing my body.” 

He looked back down at her body and said, “Not critiquing . . . appreciating. Doesn’t look like you could kick the shit out of me, that’s all.” He liked the giggle that got out of her. It was a familiar kind of laugh, genuine, comfortable, and maybe a little intimate. 

When he got done with her feet, he had her roll over, and started on his way back up. It was a lot harder to control what he wanted to do now, but he’d set himself a goal, and he wasn’t going to stop half way. He spent some time on her thighs, hips and sides and spent a little time on the knife scar on her upper abdomen that he would never not feel bad about. Almost thought about stopping there, but this wasn’t about him. It was about her. 

He wasn’t sure what to do about her breasts. There were some more bruises on them . . . probably from him last night and another bite mark over her collarbone. He looked up at her. “Is this the problem?” She opened her eyes and looked at him, so he said, “You don’t like pain, right?” 

She looked down at her body and said, “I don’t like being hit or choked. I’m a hunter. I get enough of that as it is. I’m not opposed to the occasional bite, pinching, or grabbing, which is all you did. None of it hurt . . . You timed it right, so it wouldn’t. I’m just a bit sore now. That’s all.” He put some more oil in his hands and rubbed them together before he looked at her breasts and said, “So, if I . . . “ 

“Do what you think’s right.”

“That hurt?” She smiled and shook her head, and yeah, maybe it was getting harder to stay ‘good.’ He should keep talking. Nah, fuck it. His mouth collided with hers. He did tell her that he wouldn’t kiss her, but how could he not? Maybe it was his reward for being good. His hands slid up her her shoulders and down her arms, so he could finish what he’d started. When he was done, he pulled up to look at her, and shook his head before she could say what she was thinking. “Save me for another time. This was for you.” 

Her eyes flitted between his to see if he was serious before she said, “You’re going to spoil me.” 

Maybe. Maybe it’s something he wanted to do be able to do for someone. “It was okay?” 

She smiled. “Think it’s in the top 3 best times I’ve ever felt . . . never had one of those before.” 

Never? It’s not something he would’ve really paid attention to when he was a demon going through her memories, but she’d been around for a while, so he’d just assumed. Kind of liked that it was a first she was having with him. He needed to focus more on other firsts she could have with him. Now that he thought about it, he’d never given a massage to anyone, or at least not a whole one, or even much of a partial one. Wasn’t really something you did with one-night stands, and it wasn’t really anything he and Lisa did . . . He’d just barely been hanging on the entire year he was with her. He guessed that he’d never had one either. 

“You’re sure you don’t want one?” 

He smiled briefly and said, “Save it for after the ogre hunt. Think I’ll need it then.” 

\-------------------

Why’d it have to rain last night? All this mud was going to slow him down. Dean watched the puddle he was next to ripple again. Didn't look like she'd been fucking with him about how big these things were. Why’d he have to be such a smart ass? ‘That’s complete bullshit. There’s no way they’re really that big. They couldn’t have stayed hidden this long if they were.” As soon as he’d said it, she’d bet him $100 that it’d do the Jurassic Park thing in the puddle after she dumped a couple bags of blood over his head. 

He’d been fucking wrong, and now he was muddy and bloody and out $100. Plus, he had a fucking monster the size of a dinosaur to deal with once it got here. He really hated hunting sometimes. Still, he was playing bait and being the main killer of the pair. He guessed he should suck it up and get this over with, so he yelled for help again to make the act seem more convincing if these things were supposed to be smart. 

If these things could smell fear, then he might have some trouble convincing it he was scared. On the other hand, he could be killed, and dying didn’t exactly seem like a whole lot of fun. He was just kind of starting to let himself live. He’d gotten to know his parents, and he’d found the right woman. He still needed to find Sam, but living this side of his last death had been pretty good all things considered, and he didn’t want to let that go and hand it over to his Mr. Hyde. 

The puddle rippled again, and he wondered how the hell these things could be stealthy if they made vibrations like that. Then he heard the whiz of a sniper bullet and felt something start dripping down on top of his head, so he rolled out of the way just a giant hand reached down to scoop him up. He rolled again to make sure he was out of reach, and then looked up. Wish he hadn’t. 

It really was the size of the fucking trees, and it was really fucking ugly. It blended in some with the surrounding forest, but it was by no means invisible. Beth had done her job. He could see the knick in the front of its neck that was oozing some kind of neon green shit, so he felt the top of his head, and yeah, that’s the shit that’d fallen on him. She’d also pissed it off, but it wasn’t pissed at her. No, it was pissed at him, and it was fucking fast. 

It just clipped him in the shoulder as he was getting to his feet. He wasn’t going to have enough time to climb any of these trees. They’d seriously come into this unprepared for – 

Dean heard the whiz of another sniper bullet and the roar that came out of the monster made his insides feel like jelly and might’ve made him fall over again, but he didn’t wait to see what the monster was doing before he was on his feet again and running for a tree on the far side of the clearing from where Beth was. If he could get in a tree, she could push it back his way. The monster just caught sight of him and blocked his path, and then Dean saw what Beth had done before he took off running in a circle going the other direction. 

She’d shot out one of its eyes. It meant that its blind spot just got a whole lot bigger . . . Except it wasn’t dumb. It accounted for it’s new weakness in no time and still managed to grab ahold of him when he got behind it. The next thing he knew it was holding him over its head with both hands. This was it. He was dead. It was going to rip him in half or break his back, and break his head, and then he was going to become that thing that he didn’t want to be. 

There was the sound of another sniper bullet, and the ogre let out another roar before it threw him on the ground, and then Dean had no idea which way was up and which was down, and the world wouldn’t stop spinning. He had no idea where that thing was now. He heard it roar again a couple of times and then heard it crashing through some trees . . . Beth. Maybe it knew where she was. He didn’t know where she was anymore, but he couldn’t let that thing get to her, or she was dead. 

Dean got to his knees before he heard another sniper bullet and a big crash to his left. His attention snapped in that direction, as he got to his feet and pulled his machete out. Everything was still spinning, but the ogre hadn’t gone that far, and it was on its knees. He could finish it off now, just had to get to it. 

He limped in an unintentional zigzag pattern towards it and might have fallen down at least once, okay maybe twice, but when he got to it, it was just kneeling there in a daze. He didn’t know what Beth had done, but whatever she did, it wasn’t going anywhere, or maybe it was faking him out? He kept a wide berth and was contemplating how to get up a tree, so he could get high enough to take its head when the wood of the tree next to him splintered. 

It grabbed his attention for obvious reasons, but when he looked at the splintered wood, he saw another one of those monsters charging through the forest towards him. It looked bigger than this one. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was supposed to do with it. Run, maybe? That seemed like a good idea, so he limped away in the opposite direction. 

Dean heard Beth take a couple more shots, but he couldn’t really focus on whether or not they’d hit the monster or not. Really, he was just focusing on staying on his feet while he made a hasty retreat, or that’s what he was trying to do until the new one roared behind him. The roar knocked him down, and he wondered if he and Beth had started some kind of a medieval ogre war he hadn’t been anticipating. He didn’t know what to do if they were just going to keep calling in reinforcements. 

Sitting up, he watched the new ogre trying to get the attention of the one on its knees. When the one on its knees wouldn’t respond after a brief examination, the new one put it’s hands on either side of kneeling ogre’s head and looked at Dean while it twisted and then pulled the other one’s head off. Even by his standards, it was really gruesome, and he couldn’t look away as it was happening. He really just felt like throwing up. That’s what it was going to do to him, right? Could the Mark bring that back? 

The big one got to its feet and was stomping towards him. There’s no way he’d get out of the way in time. The next thing Dean knew, there was a hatchet sticking out of a scrape in the skin at the side of its neck. More green shit rained down onto the ground, and he and the ogre both looked into the trees to his right. Beth was on one of the branches, took aim with her rifle, and fired, hitting the new ogre in the eye. 

It started roaring in pain, and Beth slung her rifle over her shoulder. She jumped down a few of the branches until she was close enough to just jump all the way to the ground. As soon as she landed, she grabbed a rope she had wrapped around her shoulder, tied one end around the base of the tree, and by the time the ogre decided to go for her, she’d taken off running in a big circle in the direction of its blind eye with the other end of the rope. 

The rope wrapped around the ogre’s legs a couple of times and tripped it up. When it fell on its face, Beth stood in front of it, waited for it to get up onto its hands and knees, and then she said something to it. It stopped moving and grunted. Beth said something else. It grunted again, looked at Dean, and then back at Beth. Shaking her head, Beth said something else to it, and a split second later, it made a move, like it was going to go for Dean again. Beth was fast on the trigger and totally blinded it by shooting out its other eye before moving off to the side. While it was blindly thrashing around, she pulled back on the bolt, aligned the next shot, and pulled the trigger, shooting it through the ear, and now it looked just as dazed as the first one had. 

Coming over to help Dean up, Beth said, “Finish it.” 

In a stupor, Dean looked down at the machete in his hand before he reached for her angel blade that she’d leant him, pulled it out of its sheath and handed it to her handle first. This was hers all the way. 

“I did what I had to do to keep you safe . . . ish, or alive at least. It’s in pain. Put it out of its misery.” 

He didn’t know if he could. It was still pretty tall even on all fours, and he didn’t think he could climb on its back without falling off or throwing up. It smelled really bad. He’d try. It did need to be put out of its misery. In fact, because it did, he got no enjoyment from the kill whatsoever. 

Getting most of the way through its neck, Dean toppled off as its body fell out from under him. He rolled onto his knees to finish it off the rest of the way. Then he might’ve gotten sick. It’d been coming for a while. So had the ringing in his ears, the pain in his head, and the black dots in his vision that he started noticing more now that the job was finished. 

Beth helped him get back on his feet, put his arm around her shoulders to support his weight, and told him what was going to happen now. “Come on. I’m going to reset your shoulder, get you cleaned up and take you to a hospital.” 

“Fine.”

“You’re not . . . trust me.” 

He did. “Okay.”


	84. Monster Collector

“There’s some serious bruising and slight swelling on his brain.” That’s better than I’d thought it’d be, so that was good, I guess. “His shoulder looks good, but he’s going to need to keep it in a sling.” That wasn’t happening. “His leg was broken, so we put him in a cast, and he’ll need to wear it for 3 to 4 months. If he’s as active as you say he is, that’s probably a good thing, because he’s going to need to take it easy for the next 4 to 6 weeks. We were able to save his spleen, but we did have to remove part of it. He also has a bruised liver and severely bruised kidneys. We want to keep him in for observations, but for a man who fell off the side of a mountain, he’s a very lucky man.” 

Not so lucky. He was going to kill me. We had like 5 weeks before Azazel. No wait. I brought him as far into the future as I could without it being the Apocalypse, so he could get better medical care. We could just stay here until he was better and then go back to when we left. “When can I see him?” Yeah, now sounded good. 

I don’t know how long I was waiting for him to wake up, but it felt like forever of me staring at the same page in a book I wasn’t reading at all. One of the times I looked up, he was looking back, so I put the book down, and he said, “Nurse? You wanna find my brother for me? Sam . . . think he should be around here somewhere.” 

My heart skipped a couple of beats. Then he grinned. “Been waiting for you to look over at me for a while, so I could say that.” I breathed out a relieved laugh, and he said, “Think I can get away with anything I want for however long I want, and you can’t do anything about it . . . What’s the damage?” 

Uh, well. Moving my chair closer to him, so I could hold his hand, I looked as apologetic as I could and said, “I’m sorry, but when they went in, they found some things they didn’t expect, and they had to remove the part of your brain that makes you funny.” 

He went from looking like he was preparing for the worst to giving me a genuine laugh. “I want a new nurse.” 

“They did have to take part of your spleen though.” 

He tried brushing it off. “You lost the whole thing once, didn’t you?” 

“My Dad gave me a new one, but yeah, I lost it for about a year and a half . . . Sounds weird, like I left it behind in a motel, and he spent a year and a half trying to buy one on the black market.” 

He smiled and asked, “What else?” 

Taking a deep breath, I watched him, while I answered. “Your liver and kidneys are really bruised, which can be serious, so you have to take it easy until they’re better . . . pretty severe concussion, but you’ll be okay. Your shoudler’s okay, but they want you to wear a sling . . . and you have a broken leg, so they put you in a cast that you’ll need to wear for 3 to 4 months. They said for a guy who fell down a mountain, you’re lucky.” 

He looked off to the side with a sigh, so I quickly said, “I’m sorry. I should’ve –“ 

Looking back at me again, he asked, “How sorry?” 

“What?” 

“Sorry enough to give me sponge baths whenever I want for the next 3 to 4 months?” I nodded slowly, and he smiled. “I’m holding you to that, but I don’t want you to be sorry. I’m not. One of the best hunts I’ve been on for a while. Back to basics, not the end of the world, but not easy . . . That’s the way it should be, and that was some good shooting.” I bowed my head and opened my mouth to say I hadn’t been fast enough, but he said, “You were, or I’d have black eyes right now.” 

“Well, you do have one black eye right now.” 

Dean smiled again. “You know what I meant.” 

Yeah, I did. “I should’ve been –“ 

“On the ground? No. Needed you where you were figuring out how to bring them down.” 

But he would’ve done a better job of doing that than – 

“Rather have me be the one in this hospital bed than you.” 

_Yeah, well, I wouldn’t._

He smirked in response. “I know . . . only way you’d get out of those sponge baths now.” He was on a roll. I stood up to give him a short kiss and rested my forehead on his. “You smell better.” 

“So, you weren’t a fan of my new perfume?” 

He shook his head. “Think it made me throw up.” 

“No, the concussion did that.” He shook his head again, so I said, “It was the ogre.” 

“It was the first time I threw up, but it was you the second time.” 

“It was the price we both paid for me being able to mask my scent.” 

“What was it?” 

“You don’t want to know.” 

Brushing my hair back, he tried again. “Seriously, what was it?” 

“An entire container of bear urine . . . Why’d you think I wanted us to get out of there so fast? The last thing we needed was a bear chasing us down.” 

Dean snorted. “And you got it all over me too . . . awesome.” 

“That awful green ogre slime that you had all over you was a lot worse.” 

“Yeah, and it was your fault I was wearing it.” 

Guess it was. “I’ll do better next time.” 

He shook his head fractionally. “Next time I won’t turn down the rope.” 

Oh yeah. “You owe me $100.” 

“For what?” 

“I know you saw it.” 

He shook his head and deadpanned, “Nope . . . I got nothin’. Must’ve been in the part of my brain they removed.” 

_Nice try._

“You’re good?” 

_I will be when we get you out of here._ “Wanna go now?” 

“Can’t. You need to be monitored, but I won’t leave you. If they kick me out, I’ll climb back in the window.” 

“After you go back and have a look around the woods?” I hesitated, and he said, “Come on, Beth. I know Latin. I know you told that second one you’d find its child and teach it to eat pigs and how not to get caught by people like us.” 

Yeah, I did say that. I also told her not to attack Dean, because he hadn’t been the one to lobotomize her mate, I was. I think that made her decide to go for him anyway to get back at me. He brushed my hair back again and said, “How’d you know?” 

“How’d I know what?” 

“Any of it? That it’d know Latin, that it was a female, or that they had little ogre running around? Were they the two your team killed?” 

“I don’t think so . . . think that means there’s more of an ogre problem in both universes than we thought. I distinctly remember Rufus saying the drawings in the book didn’t look much like them.” 

“Okay, so how’d you know?” 

“She looked European?” He laughed, so I tried to explain. “The pictures from the drawings in the bunker looked a lot more like her than the one she killed . . . and if she originated in Europe, and I don’t know . . . got here in a boat or something, then I figured if I had a limited amount of time, Latin was the way to go, since it’s the root of all the Romance languages. I thought she’d at least get the gist of what I was saying. If that hadn’t worked, I would’ve gone with German, but it did work, and . . . in nature, females of their species are generally less colorful and can be bigger than the males . . . It took her a long time to get there after he first started calling for her . . . As fast as she was moving, compared to how long it took him to get there from their cave means she delayed leaving for a reason . . . I think she stayed behind to make sure her child was hidden before she left . . . and then she ran flat out to get to the one that was calling for her. 

When she got there, she didn’t go directly for you. For all she knew, there could’ve been a lot of us out there, but she took the time to stop at the other one to see if he was okay, and the way she was with him . . . She was in anguish and tender. Killing him was a mercy kill even though it didn’t look like it. All of her attention was on him, so I was able to get a lot closer without her noticing. Then she went for you, but by then she should’ve noticed that you weren’t the threat, and she didn’t. She walked right out into the open out of raw emotion instead of going back to her child. That’s how I know the one she killed was definitely her mate.” 

“You can’t raise a monster just because you feel bad for killing its parents, Beth.” I didn’t say anything, so he added, “50 people in 100 mile radius over the last 10 years, and that’s what we know about . . . feel bad for them.” 

I did. “I’m not leaving a little monster out there on its own . . . Yeah, it’s cruel because maybe it’ll starve, or maybe a mountain lion or bear or pack of wolves will maul it to death, but also, who knows what it’ll start doing to survive? What if it gets hungry and starts walking into campsites to snatch unsuspecting campers, because it doesn’t know any better?” 

“Best thing for it is to put it down.” I shook my head, so he said, “What? Are you going to put it in clothes from Big&Tall and send it off to school? You can’t raise something like that Beth . . . It’s not like a lot of the monsters we see that can pass as human.” 

“I don’t care. I’m not killing it if it hasn’t done anything wrong yet. I don’t know if it has, but if it hasn’t, I’m not killing it, and I told its Mom I wouldn’t, so . . . my hands are tied.” 

He breathed out another laugh. “So, keeping your word to a monster means something, does it?” 

“Yeah, why wouldn’t it? Not all monsters are bad. Maybe it could help us the way Abbey does.” 

He looked less than sure about that. “So, you want to bring it with us back to your universe?” 

“I do if it hasn’t done anything wrong yet.” 

He sighed before trying a different approach. “Lets say you raise it for a few years, get attached, and then it kills someone? Are you going to put it down then?” 

“It depends.” 

“What do you mean, it depends? It doesn’t depend . . . If it kills someone, it needs to go.” 

I quickly justified myself by saying, “Abbey’s killed people . . . a lot of people, but she did it to save me . . . if it kills people for the same reason, I could hardly kill it, could I? If I did, it’d be like saying, ‘you actually look like a monster, so there’s zero tolerance for you.’ That isn’t fair.” 

He muttered something about how there should’ve been zero tolerance for Abbey too, because that would’ve been fair, but before I could refute that, he added, “You have a monster collecting problem . . . You wouldn’t have killed that shifter that looked like you if it weren’t begging you to do it. You brought like 50 werewolves into your camp. You keep a hybrid on staff and let her niece play with your daughter when you and me both know she could kill Rogue before anyone could do anything to stop her if she’s as fast as her aunt was at killing that Randy guy. You’re keeping Gadreel in your camp even though you know what he’s capable of doing . . . You brought me with you when I was a demon, and now this . . . You have a problem.” 

I slid my hand up to his chest and asked, “Can I?” 

Putting his hand over mine, he sighed. “I don’t know. Is it going to kill me?” 

“No, but it’ll probably set off the alarms.” 

“Oh, well if that’s all . . . go ahead, but if you get kicked out, I expect to see you find a way through that unopenable window in 10 minutes, or I’m getting out of here.” 

“Okay.” I pictured what I wanted to show him and focused on accessing the Mark over his heart. “Can you see it?” 

He was quiet for a few seconds. “I’m in the woods. What do you want me to see?” 

“It’s coming.” 

_Shoot her if she tries anything funny._ Dean’s head turned to the right a little, before he said, “I’ve already seen this from your point of view, Beth. I don’t need to see – Fuck.” 

He hadn’t seen it from a third party perspective. Little different when you don’t have to watch someone being stabbed from the person being stabbed’s point of view. I think you get a lot more details as an observer.

“There’s no way he should’ve missed that shot. Think something was protecting you from – maybe not . . . cheap shot with the knife . . . How do they not know you’re pregnant? I can see it . . . That bitch Trish can see it too . . . She’s going for . . . You’re still faster than them . . . Think I know why they were on the wall crew.” 

He winced a little around the time I got a branch to the back of my head, and then about a minute later said, “I don’t need see the rest.” 

“The rest is what I want you to see.” 

He shook his head a little. “I really don’t . . . ah, fuck, Beth I don’t wanna see this.” 

It was at the carving in my forehead part, which was probably pretty hard to watch. “Do you really want me to stop?” 

His breathing picked up, but he was trying to keep calm about it. “No . . . You took it like a champ. I should probably do the same.” 

_Let’s see what Dean thinks about you after he gets a load of this . . . won’t be hopping into his bed again._ “I don’t know what she’s talking about . . . You still look pretty hot.” 

I laughed, and he smiled briefly until Randy started in on his don’t she look pretty now and burning witches crap. A couple minutes later Dean said, “Don’t remind him that his friends are probably dying. That – Jesus Christ.” 

Yeah, then the stabbing started, and Dean’s monitors started going haywire. “I’m still here, Dean.” He didn’t say anything. I went to take my hand off his chest, and his other hand reached up to hold it there. His heart rate went back down, but he was sweating, and his breaths were coming out in short bursts. “I’m okay, Dean.” 

He shook his head a little, and a tear fell before he said, “You should be dead . . . forget the okami hunt . . . forget the Gadreel thing . . . This was it . . . You shouldn’t have . . . I have no idea how you got your blade so fast with you looking like that . . . That fucking dickhead . . . Goddamnit! The guy’s dying, and he still won’t –“ 

Dean’s turned to the right slightly, when Abbey and Cameron showed up, and his breathing slowed down. “I get it.” 

I smiled before I said, “Not yet, you don’t.” 

Abbey finished off Randy, and Dean shook his head marginally. “No, I do.” 

I focused my attention on my little band of merry tablet keepers. Abbey and Cameron were working together with Meg to bring down the first hybrid we came across. “Where are you?” 

“In the truck . . . too big to get in and out of it very easily.” 

He waited a few seconds before asking, “Can I see you?” 

He could do whatever he wanted. “Yeah, just walk over . . . I’m just showing you what happened from a third party perspective. You’re the third party, so you can see it however you want, just like you could when I showed you how you make the universe better.” 

He went over to the truck and hopped up. “Kevin . . . God, he looks so real.” He waited for a few seconds before he smiled briefly and said, “You’re not that big . . . You should be bigger if it’s almost time.” 

We’ll see about that. I whisked him away from that scene to the night we took out Crowley’s topside army. “Where is this?” 

Demon Dean had had a weird eye for what details interested him. “Nova Scotia. It’s where we put the tablets back.” 

He was quiet for a few seconds before he said, “Is this the thing with the tornado?” 

“It is.” 

“Is it weird if I say I feel like this is familiar, but don’t remember it at all.” 

No, it was a pretty emotional event for my Dean. If he didn’t remember it from being a demon, then maybe that’s why he felt like he remembered it. I put him roughly where my Dean had been, so he could watch it unfold, and a couple of minutes later, he asked, “Can we go back and watch that killing exoricsm again?” 

I brought him back to the start, and he leaned forward a little while it happened again. “That’s awesome.” As soon as Abbey and Cameron rolled out of their speeding trucks, he said, “Okay, that was pretty awesome too. They’re like stunt women,” just before their trucks that were loaded with gasoline canisters ran into the rock formation in the middle and exploded. He flinched a little, and then 10 seconds later, laughed. “Yeah, maybe you are a little slow at running now . . . But not as slow as Sam is at getting out of there . . . What’s he waiting on?” 

“He’s doing what you’re doing. He had no idea what we were really planning.” Sam pulled away and went to his rendezvous spot, so I said, “Watch for Abbey or Cameron . . . they’re to your east and west running up the hills towards the trucks.” 

Dean shook his head a little. “I’m watching for you.” 

“You’re supposed to be watching them.” 

“Already told you I got it . . . now I want to see the –“ His head turned to the left, a little, and then about 20 seconds later he looked to the right. “It’s coming . . . the sky’s green.” Yeah, I know. I’m making it look the way it looked that night. 

He held his breath when the funnel cloud started to come down right over where the tablets and I were and exhaled as it met with the snow on the ground. As it picked it up and became an F5 tornado, I think he totally forgot to watch the trucks or look for me, and then when it started spinning around and collecting monsters, he whispered in awe, “That’s awesome.” 

A few seconds later, he laughed. “How do you go from looking like a complete badass to . . . Are you doing a happy dance?” 

He looked at peace. I think I’d made up for what I made him watch earlier. “Yeah, I was pretty excited by the whole thing. Wait until I start clapping.” He smiled again briefly. “You wanna see one that’s not so happy?” He shook his head, so I said, “I’m not in it.” 

“Okay.” 

I put him in the middle of our camp, and he whispered, “Bobby’s . . . Feels like I’m home, but you guys have changed it a lot . . . It’s totally different being here than seeing it memory surfing . . . Mind if I walk around before you show me what you wanna show me?” 

“Yeah, go for it.”

He wasn’t quite done with his tour 5 minutes later, but he couldn’t stay in there forever, so I had Missouri come out of the house and head towards the school Sam and Gadreel were exiting. Then I showed him everything that happened the night that Cameron died. I’d heard enough from everyone at the camp what happened, so I used their accounts to show him. I think it was pretty accurate.

He watched Sam trying to get through to Adam or their Mom or anyone else in the Dead Hunter’s Society before Sam started putting plans in order to get the kids to Wisconsin where there was a wall. I think maybe he’d been expecting the abyss ground troops, not daeva. It took a while for everything to get put in motion, so it was dark by the time the kids were actually in the trucks.

The chaos really started about 30 seconds after the dogs began barking. Dean flinched again as the first semi trailers started flipping onto their sides and roofs, thrown by invisible forces. “The daevas?” He didn’t really need an answer, so I didn’t give him one. He watched Sam and the other hunters run around trying to get the kids out of the trailers, so they could get them to relative safety somewhere else. Some people were picked up and ripped apart and others were able to use flares to protect themselves and others. 

Sam sent Gadreel to Wisconsin, but by that point, Sam was in no real condition to still be on his feet. “Cameron and Meg carried Sam into the basement?” 

“Yeah.” 

“And he never let go of Rogue?” 

“No.” 

“Feel like I should be doing something.” 

“I know.”

Cameron left Sam in the basement and met Abbey on the stairs carrying Dr. Thomas. She helped Abbey bring her down, and then they ran back out into the chaos of the camp. Meg brought them more flares, told them to not let them die out, and then all three of them started rounding up the kids and got them into the panic rooms in the cabins. 

Carrie got hurt, and Abbey took her to the house. Cameron ran out of one of the cabins to get a kid that was maybe 25 yards away from her. She saw a girl trapped in the light being given off from a lantern up near the house, so she gave her flare to the kid next to her and told him to run to the panic room in the cabin she’d just left before she took off running towards the girl that was trapped. 

She just made it to the girl, and then the lantern was knocked down, by one of the daevas, and something started clawing at the little girl, so Cameron threw herself over her to shield her. It was pretty bad. She was nearly cut in half in a few places. 

Abbey came out of the house and saw it happen, so she ran to them. Cameron told her to leave her and take the little girl, because she couldn’t protect them both, and it was Abbey’s duty to put the life of the child above all else. Then she told her to protect Lily the same way, and Abbey hesitated, so Cameron gave her a direct order and pulled Amazonian rank on her as the first born. It made Abbey look angry, and then Abbey gave the flare to the little girl, picked the little girl up in one arm, and grabbed Cameron’s hand, while she said, “You would not leave me, sister,” and proceeded to drag Cameron towards the cabin, but by the time she got her there, Cameron was dead.


	85. Paying for Your Sins

Beth took her hand away from Dean’s chest, and he blinked a couple of times. “I got it after they saved you in the woods . . . but that was . . . I get it. I shouldn’t have said what I did about them, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong about this ogre . . . It’s more animal than human. It’ll probably grow up to kill kids, not sacrifice itself for them, and if we leave it behind, you won’t be here to stop it when that happens.” 

Beth sighed before she said, “I still want to check in on it,” and he smiled briefly. 

“Okay, but I’m going with you . . . don’t trust your bleeding heart not to give it your trigger finger if it’s starving.” She hesitantly nodded in agreement, so he decided to change the subject. “How much time did that kill?” 

She looked at her watch. “About 30 minutes.” 

“Wanna keep going? It’s better than watching TV . . . probably the only way to keep me in the hospital.” 

“I shouldn’t . . . What if you get addicted to it and never want to come out of there?” 

“Because of the other Dean?”

She nodded. Maybe what she’d just showed him had made him feel whole in a way he hadn’t in a long time, but he didn’t think it was because of her Dean. He didn’t know how to tell her any clearer than he already had that it really was just mostly him. She was holding out for a guy he didn’t think was coming back. This Mark wasn’t coming off, and even if it did, he was still probably all she’d be left with at the end. 

He didn’t think God made one soul into two . . . two identical souls into one, yeah, but the opposite way? The more time Dean’d had to think about it, the more he thought the only way God could do that was by doing what he’d done in creating these different universes. That’s how there were more Dean Winchesters out there, but to create them from scratch without creating a new universe? If God could do that, he would have. Maybe Dean needed to be more blunt, but he didn’t know what she’d do if he was. 

“I’m just trying to find a way to kill some time, cause I’m ready to get out of here now, and I’m thinking that you’re going to be all-Nurse Ratchet with me until they give me the all clear.” She smiled, and he got a little more serious. “I’m sorry you had to kill your Sam . . . He did a lot of good after he turned things around.” That Sam had definitely gone off the deep end by the time Dean met him, but now he was thinking that Beth was right. If that Sam had just stayed in their universe, he would’ve been fine. 

Beth ducked her head a little and asked what he wanted to see now. He didn’t know. What did he want to see up close, like he was a ghost watching everything happen in front of him? “How about when you were closing that gate in China?” 

She smiled before saying, “That’s good, but I think things were going so fast that I couldn’t give you an accurate account of it . . . There’s no way I could remember the blow-by-blow any better than I could remember the details on getting into and out of Hell.” 

“The Alpha Changeling?” That’d been one of his favorites when he was a demon. 

“How much of it?” 

“Until I say stop?” 

“Okay.” 

He smiled before leaning forward to give her an appreciative kiss. At this point he was ready to be with her. He was just waiting for her to say goodbye to her Dean and be ready to move forward with him. Whatever time she needed, he’d give her, but that didn’t mean it was easy. He’d liked being on the hunt with her earlier, and he’d liked waking up and seeing her here next to his bed. Now she was entertaining him and giving him a chance to see a live action version of his brother up close and in person. 

“You know he’s at the end of this?” 

“Yeah, when I was a demon, I thought he was whiney. I wanna see if I still think that.” It felt different watching these things the way he was watching them now and as a human. Like seeing her 9 months pregnant made him almost feel like she was carrying their kid, and he’d liked that. 

“That is why I don’t think you should do this too much.” 

“Well, then show me having her, and I bet I won’t think that . . . keep splitting it up with good and bad stuff, and I won’t want to stay in there.” 

She sighed again. “Okay, but only tonight, okay?” That’s all he wanted. It was just to overcome the boredom of being in this hospital bed. 

She put her hand on his chest, and then the next thing he knew, he was standing in a rundown motel room. He saw Beth sitting on the floor next to a bed, and walked around to get a better look. Rogue looked so small. She was only a few months old. Beth was filling her in on where her Dad was and telling her about cutting heads off Alphas, and he laughed. Rogue had no idea what Beth was saying, but she looked like she was hanging on Beth’s every word. “Best hunter that’s ever lived?” 

He waited for Beth’s voice. “Yeah.” 

Is that all he was getting? He waited a beat and said, “Him or all of us?” 

“Obviously, I meant him at the time, but you’re him, so I think you are too.” 

“Would he have messed up today?” She was quiet a little too long, and then said, “Under the same circumstances, he would have done what you did . . . the same way you would’ve have done what he did if you’d been on his ogre hunt.” He could live with that.

He listened to Beth tell Rogue about going to get Phoenix ash and then about how she was going to take off and go to Heaven on her own. She felt bad about being dishonest, but she said Rogue’s Dad needed to stay with Rogue, and he wouldn’t if he knew what Beth was going to do. She also knew he’d still probably find a way to go after her and Rogue would end up being watched by Sam. “How’d you know what he would do if you didn’t remember him?” 

Beth waited a few seconds before saying, “Cas couldn’t remove the way I felt about things. That’s what I felt that Dean would do.” He’d think about that another time. Watching Beth be a Mom was kind of . . . he kind of liked it.

When the baby lifted her head and alerted Beth to there being something outside, it raised Dean’s alarm bells too. Instead of taking the time to get what she needed from her weapons bag, Beth used that time to put the baby in a duffel bag, pulled the bed out, and hid the baby between the bed and wall. By the time she got to the door, she barely had time to think that she should look for something in her weapons bag before the door was kicked in.

He felt his heart rate increase when he saw the size of the Alpha compared to Beth. It wasn’t the size of those ogres earlier, but he didn’t remember it being that big when he was a demon. It picked Beth up and threw her into the wall across the room, and he felt like he should do something again. That feeling got worse as the Alpha sprinted over to Beth, who was on her hands and knees, kicked her in the ribs to knock the wind out of her, picked her up by the neck, and started punching her in the head and ribs with a strength and speed she couldn’t do much about. 

Beth managed to break its hold on her. It dropped her, but then it just picked her up and threw across the room again, right through the table. “Don’t feel so bad about today now.” 

He heard her laugh, and that was good, because he needed something to remind him that she wasn’t the woman he saw in front of him right now. He heard her arm crack when she blocked one of the blows from the Alpha and winced, but she used the arm again to block it a couple more times until she found an opening she could use to stab the Alpha in the heart and make it back off some.

She finally got her aerosol can out of her bag, but then she had to use it to kill a normal changeling that was heading for Rogue. The Alpha used the distraction to knock Beth back down onto her hands and knees again, and then the look on Beth’s face changed. He knew that look. “That’s when you tapped into your soul.” 

She started moving a lot faster. She still got thrown across the room again, but she went from having the aerosol can in her hand when she was picked up to having a knife in her hand when she fell to the ground, and then instead of using her time to block, the way a normal person would when the Alpha got to her, she used her time to slam the knife through the Alpha’s foot. “This is what you told Rogue, I’d have to do . . . find a way to keep it from jumping in the Hudson.” 

He watched her pin the other foot and then she stabbed the Alpha in the eye with her angel blade when it reached for one of the knives. “And the eye thing . . . you did that again today with the ogres.” 

He heard Beth mutter that it works on sharks, and it made him smile briefly before he watched the Beth he could see douse the alpha’s back with lighter fluid and torch it with a matchbook. There was another normal changeling to deal with after that, and Beth handled killing it with super speed and efficiency. Only after it was lit up, did she hear Rogue crying and go back into being herself again.

Not tapping into her soul didn’t make her any less brave or calm. She still jumped through the flames to get to her daughter and took the time she needed to make sure Rogue was covered in water to protect her. “Don’t think you really need to tap into your soul. I mean maybe for the speed thing, but for everything else . . . you don’t need it.” 

She didn’t say anything, and he hadn’t really thought she would. He watched her jump back through the flames and shoot the lock out on the door leading into the next room. When she was through, she tossed her jacket. Still got burnt from what he could tell, but she didn’t notice it yet. He followed her into the next room, and she climbed through a window in the there, but the smoke had already gotten to her. She was coughing as she headed towards the Impala when a final changeling made a play for her and the baby. Beth wasn’t really in any fit state to be taking anything on by that point, but she tried, and then when she knew she couldn’t beat it head on, she feigned being even weaker than she was to lure the changeling back towards the motel.

They had a bit of a fight near the motel, and then they both went crashing through the wall. He went to follow them and stopped when he heard a truck door slam. Looking to his left, Dean saw her Dean and Sam get out of a snow plow. Her Dean grabbed a bag and pulled a towel out of it, so he could douse it with bottles of water while he told Sam to go to the bag that was crying. When the towel was drenched, he went into the flames after Beth. 

The first thing Beth did when she was carried out of the motel was look for Rogue. Dean looked over to where she was looking, and that was a death glare from his brother if he ever saw one. “What are you so pissed about?” 

Dean heard Beth say, “I was a bad Mom, and my Mark made him pick up on it more. He couldn’t help it.“ 

Dean shook his head. “He could help it, and that bad Mom stuff was complete crap.” Walking over to look at the Beth on the ground he added, “Look at you.” 

She muttered that she was aware of what was happening, but she couldn’t see herself the way he could, so he said, “Well, you look like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone. There’s blood all over the ground under you, and I’m fumbling around, like I don’t know what I’m doing.” 

He bent down next to the other him and said, “Check her back, genius,” and then the Beth on the ground said she might’ve hurt her lower back, so the other him rolled her and . . . yeah, that had to hurt. She talked the other Dean through what to do after he pulled part of the table out of her back. Well, she didn’t really talk, because she’d stopped talking, but the other him was picking up on what she was thinking and doing what she told him to do. And he wanted to take the pain for her . . . That whole thing she used to have with her Dean was weird . . . weirder than what Dean and her were doing right now, and this was weird now that he thought about it. It was useful though . . . Maybe he could use this to get one over on her Dean. “I was serious about wanting to see when you had her.” 

A few seconds later, Dean was standing behind Sam and Beth breaking into a little house in the middle of nowhere. “You don’t really want the play by play here, do you?” 

Did he want it? No. “Kind of feel like one of us should’ve been here for the whole experience if you had to be.” 

He went into the house and watched Sam throw a few wards up before helping Beth into a bedroom at the back. Then Sam went out to the truck to get in touch with the other him. Dean wanted to hear what her Dean had to say, but he didn’t want to leave Beth alone in the house. Looking through the window, he got a perfect view of Sam in the truck, so he figured he could tell by his brother’s body language what was happening. 

At first, Sam looked a little nervous and took a deep breath before he picked up the radio and said something into it. Sam took his thumb off the button and waited, and then exhaled a sigh of relief when he got an answer. Sam said something back and looked like he was holding his breathe while he waited for the response. When he got it a few minutes later, his shoulders slumped, and he had a full-blown argument over the radio for another 15 minutes or longer before he hopped out of the truck and slammed the door shut behind him. 

Sam paused to calm down before he opened the door, put a happy face on for Beth, and went in to check on her. Her Dean was a dick for leaving Sam with this. It wasn’t Sam’s kid. It was his. Beth asked Sam for snow, so Sam got it for her, and then she kicked Sam out again. Sam went back out to the truck to try again, shook his head when he didn’t get the response he wanted, picked up his bag, and then brought it in with him, so he could start going through a book he had in there on pregnancy. Looking from the book to Sam, Dean said, “You were reading up on it?” 

He heard Beth say, “He and you both did. I didn’t, so Sam decided to take some last minute notes for me.” 

Dean looked around for her even though he knew he wouldn’t see her. “I read up on it too?” 

She sounded like she was smiling when she said, “Yeah, you kept it a secret, but you had those books for months, and you read them cover to cover a couple of times.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah, you and Sam argued for the 3 months I was gone about what to follow out of them without either one of you admitting you’d read them.” 

Dean smiled and went back into her room to see how she was doing. He was in there for what felt like forever. Sam kept going out to the truck to try and get her Dean to come back, and he did it a lot. “You knew he was trying to get me to come back?” 

“I did.” 

Dean looked back down at her, and she was watching the door. She heard Sam come back, but when Sam didn’t come in here to tell her anything new, she sunk down into the pillows a little deeper and turned her head to look out the window again. Maybe she had been doing that everytime Sam left, but she never asked Sam what was happening. She never asked Sam for anything at all. “You could’ve had Sam in here for this.” 

She took a while to say anything, but when she did, it was, “I didn’t want him sticking his head under the sheets and checking things every 5 minutes,” and Dean laughed. “Better to have him go out to the truck every 5 minutes than that.”

\-----------------

Dean didn’t know how long he’d been in here, but he’d been pacing for a long time. Beth’s contractions kept getting worse and worse, and he didn’t know what to do. It’s not like she could hear him. She was just in here on her own. 

He threw another angry glare at the door as Sam left the house to try and get him to come back again. He wished his brother would stop doing that. At this point, it seemed like a lost cause, and his brother could make better use of his time by coming in here, whether she wanted him in here or not. 

Hearing the Beth on the bed say, “Oh, fuck,” Dean turned to looked at her, and his eyes got a little bigger when he saw the sheets were starting to go a deep red. “Uh, Beth?” 

He heard her whisper, “It’s going to get a lot worse,” and he went to sit next to the Beth on the bed. Her hair was drenched in sweat, and she was scared. 

“Let me hold your hand. I know you can . . . You let that evil black sludge kick my ass, and that felt real enough.” 

He waited for a few seconds before he slowly reached his hand towards hers. When he got to it, it felt solid, so he took it. “Can I hold you?” 

“For you or for me?” 

“For you.” 

“That isn’t what happened, so if you want it to be authentic, no.” 

Dean watched the Beth next to him have another contraction, and more blood came pooling out onto the sheets. “No, no, no, no . . . no. What do I do? What do I do?” He was kind of surprised that came from her. She was panicking, but she wasn’t screaming or anything. She’d gone really quiet. 

“Ask God for help. He just made a freaking tornado for you.” 

He heard the Beth outside his head say, “I didn’t know what he’d actually do if I said the wrong thing or if he’d even do anything. We kept our thing to a bare minimum back then.” 

Looking down at the Beth beside him again, he told her to call Sam. She didn’t do that. Tears started silently streaming down her cheeks while she talked to her stomach, her baby, and told it to be okay and not die and all the things she’d do for it if it hung on and stayed alive. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. She had nobody here with her. The one time Sam listened to her, and now was it? 

He got up and went into the other room to tell Sam to get his ass in there, and heard the Beth in his head say, “He can’t hear you.” 

“Yeah, I know he can’t hear me, but it’s making me feel better.” What also made him feel was smacking Sam’s book off the table before he stormed back into the bedroom. He was confronted with more blood and more of Beth silently freaking out and probably dying with as pale as she was getting. Rushing over to the bed, he tried to take the sheet off, so he could see if there was anything he could do to fix this, but the sheet stayed right where it was. 

“It’ll come off later.” 

He looked up at the ceiling and shouted, “How much later?” 

“When I’m ready to look at how bad it really is.” 

Well, if all he could do was hold her hand, that’s what he was going to do, so he went back over to sit next to her again. It’s the only thing he had right now that made him feel even a little better, but the more blood she lost, and the more she cried while talking to her baby, and the more she started apologizing to it for all kinds of things, including losing it’s father for it, the angrier he got. Was it her guy getting pissed at himself and him getting pissed at that guy? Probably. To be honest, throughout most of this, he’d felt like both. He wasn’t letting her go back to that guy. He’d sit here and see this through with her. He’d pay for that Dean’s sins, but he would not let her go back to him if he showed up again.

By the time the sheet came off he didn’t want to look. He knew it was bad, so he just buried his face in her shoulder and then maybe 30 seconds later, heard Cas say, “Where’s Dean?” It went up there as one of the 5 best times Dean had ever heard that voice. Cas looked pissed in a way Dean rarely saw though. When Cas went to go talk to Sam, Dean got up to maybe try and stop Cas from getting more pissed off even though he knew how this was going to end. 

“Look at him, Sam. Is now really a good time to be telling him that?” Now was the worst time for Sam to piss Cas off more by telling him what he’d said about messing with part of her soul. Sam and Cas had a disagreement about what Cas should do, and Dean said, “You’re seriously worried about what’ll happen to me? Fix it before she and the baby die, Cas.” He looked from Sam to Cas, like it was obvious and they were wasting time, and then Cas grabbed Sam and made him come with him to see how much blood there was. Sam freaked out and finally told Cas to do the c-section. 

After Cas kicked Sam out again, he went up to Beth, and told her he wouldn’t hurt the baby, but he had to do this, or they’d both die, so she nodded, and then Cas knocked her out. Dean watched Cas make the incision, and then pull the baby out before cutting the cord. Cas touched his fingers to Beth’s stomach, so he could heal her, but it took longer than normal. Cas was really weak. Just doing that took a lot out of him. When Beth was okay, Cas focused on the baby and getting it to breathe. Dean felt like maybe he was holding his breath too until she started crying. After that, Cas cleaned her up and put her in a clean blanket before sitting on the foot of the bed with her. 

Dean came over to look at her over Cas’s shoulder, and she was . . . tiny. She’d been through a lot, and she wasn’t necessarily all that happy about where she found herself now, but she was here. Dean looked at the door, and waited for Sam to come in here, but there was no sign of him. Why the hell not? She started to calm down after a few minutes. At least she had Cas. Cas was actually the first person to ever hold her. No wonder Cas spent as much time with her as Gabriel and her parents did. 

She was mesmerizing . . . Probably the most beautiful thing Dean had ever seen. He looked over his shoulder at Beth a minute later, and smiled briefly before he looked at the baby again. She looked like her Mom straight away. Beth couldn’t hold her right now, but it’s not like he could either, so he went back over to the Beth on the bed. He wondered if he could hold her now. He bet he could. She’d let him bury his face in her shoulder earlier, so he tried to put his arm around her, and she felt real enough. Resting his head on top of hers, he sat there with her like that until he heard his own voice in the other room. 

“Bout fucking time.” At least he came back, but someone should still give him shit for what he put Beth through. Dean stood up, planning to do just that, but Cas did his yelling for him. He knew where this was going and still found himself saying, “No, Cas, you can’t –“ 

Too late, the hand off had already happened, and Cas was moving back towards Beth. A second later, Cas and Beth were both gone, and Dean was back in his hospital room looking at her in the present. 

She looked tired. “How long was that?” 

She looked at her watch. “It wasn’t as long as when I was actually having her . . . sped it up and cut parts out, but it was still about three hours.” 

“You wanna lay here next to me?” 

“They’ll probably kick me out. They already tried a few times. You have some pretty serious injuries.” 

He didn’t care. He moved over and made room for her, so she could fit, and she kicked her shoes off before climbing through the wires and making herself comfortable. He threw his blanket over her and said, “I’m good with what I got to see . . . I don’t want to do it again.”


	86. Ironing Out the Details

“What do you mean I’m healing faster than expected?” 

_Uh, I think he meant pretty much what he said._

Dean gave me a little side-look, and the doctor said, “Let’s just say, I’m glad your wife talked me into doing all the tests again. The internal injuries are healing remarkably well. We wouldn’t expect you to be to this stage of recovery for another week or two, and the remodeling on your leg looks like it’s had a month to heal instead of a day. We feel confident in releasing you this morning. I’ll send the nurse by with the discharge papers, and I’ll see you in a week for a check-up.” 

I smiled, told the doctor, “Thanks,” and he left. As soon as he was gone, I quickly turned to Dean. “It doesn’t mean that you’re going demon again. We both know that Mark makes you stronger . . . like pick monsters up and throw them strong. This is probably the same thing.” When Dean didn’t do anything, but hang his head in concern, I added, “I’ll still give you sponge baths anytime you want them for the whole 3 to 4 months,” and he looked at me like a lost boy before resting his head on my shoulder. 

I put my arm around him, and a minute later he said, “Anytime?” 

I smiled. “Anytime.” 

Putting his hand on my upper thigh, he said, “You find us a place to live yet?” 

Not yet. “We could always –“ 

“I don’t want to go back to 1983 until this cast is off.” 

Okay. “I know a few places near here we can try . . . old hunter stop-overs.” 

Dean nodded solemnly into my shoulder and then glanced up at me. “Good, because I’m feeling really dirty, and I think my nurse should get on that right away.” 

All morning, he’d been acting . . . friskier, I guess, than he’d let himself be with me . . . well, as a human. “Yeah? I think you should’ve said that last night. The nurse this morning is like 68 and has 10 grandkids.” 

He smiled and sat up before he brought his hand to the side of my face. “Nah, grandma’s are awesome, they do this thing where –“ He cut himself off with a laugh. “I got nothin’ . . . can’t keep it going.” 

“I think that’s what grandpa’s usually say.” He chuckled as he leaned forward to give me a tantalizingly slow kiss. When the nurse came in, he pulled back to rest his forehead on mine for a couple of seconds before he sat up to fill out the paperwork. After she left, I got his stuff together, and went over to help him up. “Maybe it’s you.” 

“Maybe what’s me?” 

He looked at his leg. “When you played Marion Crane out there in those woods, I’m the one that saved you, right?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I mean it wasn’t as fast as Cas or your Dad, but it got the job done until your Dad got to you. Maybe it’s the same thing.” 

I still thought it was the Mark, but that’s not what he needed to hear. “Anything’s possible.” 

Dean hung his head and exhaled a sad laugh in response. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better, right?” 

Crouching down in front of him to get his attention, I waited until I got it and said, “No. It’s a possibility. I’ve seen too many inexplicable things in my life to rule anything out . . . except the Jersey devil and Yeti. I know they have nothing to do with it.” 

He watched me for a few seconds before he gave me a soft smile. “What about aliens?” 

“No, I can’t even rule those out . . . Who knows what happened in that operating room?” 

He snorted. “Aliens aren’t real.” His smirk fell a second later. “They’re not, right?” I gave him a mysterious smile while I stood up, but didn’t say anything. “I know I didn’t see you hunt any . . . You’re fucking with me, right?” 

Putting my hands on his shoulders, I bent down to his eye level, and said, “You tell me.” 

He looked me in the eye, like he was searching for something and finally answered, “You’re not lying . . . They’re not the right color for that, but you’re not –“ 

“You can’t tell when I’m lying by the color of my eyes.” 

He gave me a relaxed smile and said, “Yeah I can . . . Your pupils don’t dilate the way a lot of peoples’ do, but your irises go a little lighter blue than grey.” 

Damn. Maybe I did have a ‘tell’ that had nothing to do with being able to read my mind. 

Dean shook his head. “He never noticed it. And I was going to say you’re not telling the truth either . . . You don’t know if aliens are real or not.” 

“Nope . . . but there’s no way I’m ruling aliens out. The day I do is the day they decide to attack.” 

He smiled again briefly and then sighed. “Maybe it is you, but it’s because of that living TV thing we were doing last night, like a Mark to Mark thing?” 

“Do you think it charges yours or –“ 

“No. I don’t feel like I need to kill or even want to . . . Feel like myself right now. Maybe it cancels mine out, but if it does that, why would it make me heal faster?” 

“I don’t think there have been any books written on this kind of thing, but maybe we could run some tests?” 

He sat back to look up at me while I stood. “You gonna cut into my brain?” 

“I was thinking more like some of your heart, since-“ I laughed at the look on his face. “I’m kidding . . . We’ll start by seeing if it’s me by removing me from the equation for a couple of days. Then you can go to a different hospital for some tests. I’ll come back, and we’ll try it with just me being around, and then with the virtual reality thing.” 

I helped him get to his feet, and he said, “And if it isn’t you?” 

“Then I’m going with ogre slime, aliens, or the Mark.” 

Holding onto me, he asked, “And if it’s the Mark?” 

It isn’t the end of the world if it is. “We’ll figure it out.”

\-----------------

“I don’t like your plan.” 

This place wasn’t that bad. Sure it was in the middle of nowhere, but I’d gotten him quite a few things to keep him entertained. “You don’t like my plan, or you don’t want to be stuck here alone for a couple of days?” 

He looked around the room and answered, “Think you’re just trying to get out of giving me sponge baths,” before he looked at me and added, “If this is a real experiment, it won’t work. You already contaminated it with all the time you’ve spent with me since we left the hospital. Won’t be accurate.” 

He was right. “What do you propose?” 

Using his crutches to get a little closer, he shifted his weight off of his leg with a cast, so he could drop the crutch in favor of wrapping his arm around me, and planted his lips on mine. “Was thinking something more like this.”

As much as I liked this . . . “Dean, I don’t think –“

“Is it because I’m not a demon anymore?”

“What? No, it’s because you have a broken leg and organ damage . . . You’re better than you were last night, but you’re nowhere near okay yet.”

He shook his head and stepped back. I held onto him, and he brushed me off before limping over to sit on the couch. “I meant you and me . . . Is that why you and me haven’t happened yet? You were fine with it when I was a demon, but now? You’re holding back.”

_Uhhh. Does he really want to do this now?_

“Yeah, I do . . . Well, I don’t want to . . . think I have to. If you’re still holding out for your Dean . . . He’s not coming back Beth. He’s gone. God could put us together, because we have the same soul, but separating us . . . think he has to create a whole new universe to do something like that. I’m not saying you have to be with me . . . might be what I want, but if you can’t or you need time . . . I need to know which it is. You were fine with me when I was a demon, but now –“

“This isn’t about me and my Dean. I mean maybe it is, but . . . you’re holding back too, and I think it’s because of when you were a demon.” 

He looked away from me, so I tried to explain. “I think you know some of the things you said then aren’t things you can do anymore . . . If it wasn’t something you were worried about, it wouldn’t have been the first thing you said to me after you were cured and knew I wasn’t dying . . . Maybe it was so long ago that you can’t admit it anymore, but . . . you need to figure it out as much as I do.” 

I went to go get some of the things I’d gotten him, but stopped when he said, “We’re not the same anymore . . . the half-nephilim, half-demon thing . . . I told you we were the same, and we’re not anymore.” 

“I know.” 

He finally looked at me and added, “I know what that meant to you even if you won’t say it. I know that’s the only reason you gave me a chance.” 

Because I didn’t think he’d get hurt if he didn’t have the same kind of feelings as a human? I never said that. In fact, I’d said the opposite. I shook my head. “That’s not it . . . what is it really?” 

He didn’t answer, so I went to get his stuff again, and he said, “You’re Dad was right. I wanted you before you woke up that first night, but the way I felt then wasn’t the way I feel now . . . Then I knew that whatever I was looking for you’d give me, and you did . . . You made me feel calm . . . at peace maybe. That’s how I know what you need. You’ve been living in a hurricane most your life, and the worse it’s gotten, the more you need to go chasing your spy games to try and find some kind of control and feel a little more calm, but it’s not enough, and I know you might’ve been fighting it out of loyalty to him, but things were going in the right direction with you and me before . . . except I was a demon, and now that I’m not, I know how I want it to be, but I can’t feel the way I did anymore.”

“That’s okay. I understand –“ 

“No, you don’t . . . You might be able to feel more than I could as a demon, but you can’t really understand what I mean. Once you’re calm, you can feel the kinds of things you don’t think you can, but you get tossed around so much that being calm for long is really fucking hard for you. That's why I don't want to do the back and forth thing your Dean did with you for so long . . . And I know me not being a demon anymore has thrown you back into that chaos anyway. You don’t look at me the way you used to look at me, and your Dean was gone then too, so it's not that . . . I’m like 10 steps ahead of you and waiting for you to catch up, but you can’t do it until your calm first, and I don’t know how to make you that way now. Mostly, I just lied and bullied you into it when I was a demon. And I know I had a lot of problems then, but I actually think you were safer with me then. I know I threw a knife at you, and I know that was wrong, but I didn’t do it when you were universes away from your Dad, who I knew would heal you, or because I was pissed off . . . I never would’ve hurt you out of anger, and I have no idea what to think if I was better as a demon than I am as a human.” 

I went over to sit next to him and said, “I do better with show than tell, and when the tell doesn’t match the show, I get confused, so kiss me and mean it. Don’t take it back. Let me take care of you when you need it. That’s all you ever have to do.” 

He took a soft breath and said, “To get you to look at me that way again or to make you feel calm?” 

“I don’t understand this way I look at you thing. You could see my soul. Maybe the lighting is off now.” 

He smiled briefly. “Nothing more to it?“ 

“You wanna know how I saw things when you were a demon?” He didn’t say anything or indicate either way, so I said, “The first night we met, after you bitched about me being too bright, what’s the first thing you did?” He still didn’t say anything, but I knew he knew I was talking about that kiss. “Did you mean it?” He reluctantly nodded. “Did you take it back?” 

“Yeah, and I called you –“ 

“You didn’t take it back. The next day you showed up when I went to see Cain. You were a demon. You should’ve been at a brothel, not looking for me, letting Cain know you had the First Blade, and then admitting to me later that if he wanted, he could use me to get it. You shouldn’t have been trying to figure out why what happened the night before made you annoyed with both of us. You thought it had something to do with what you called me, but that wasn’t it. Then you started making your case on why you thought we worked by yelling that I wasn’t any better than you because I wasn’t entirely human either, but you didn’t know why you were bringing it up, and you got more aggressive, because I wouldn’t listen past what you were saying to understand what you meant . . . I said you couldn’t tell me what to do at all anymore, because whatever we had been doing was over. You figured it out and gave me your pitch on why I should keep things going with you. It was more like an 8-hour conversation, so it took a while before you got there, but you did and none of what happened was on you. It was on me.” 

His sigh came out as a laugh. “An 8-hour conversation’ . . . if that works for you, then okay.” 

“It does, so no, you never took it back.” 

“And the third thing?” 

“Did you let me take care of you after what Sam did to you?” He nodded, so I added, “Did you let me take care of you in that alley?” He smiled before he nodded again. “Making sure you have fun, helping you with any burdens you have, and showing you that no matter what you do, right or wrong, it doesn’t change the way I see you . . . That’s how I take care of you.” 

“But now you know your guy isn’t coming back . . . is that why you don’t look at me –“

I leaned forward to silence him with a gentle kiss and pulled back a minute later to say, “I’ve never cheated on him, and I never will . . . you are him, and he is you, and if that’s a problem, then you need to work on it. We both do . . . Relationships aren’t easy. They take a lot of work . . . That’s the reality, not the dream.”

He touched his forehead to mine and said, “Demon or not, I already signed on the dotted line, didn’t I?” 

“You really think there’s some kind of a contract?” He nodded, so I said, “Well, then if you were of sound enough mind as a demon to sign on for the mission and are still here after being cured, yeah.” His lips found mine, and his tongue playfully grazed my tongue before he said, “So, I could’ve picked up where we left off 2 months ago?” I smiled as he came back to me for another brief encounter. “Same rules as before?” 

“Do you want the same rules as before?”

“I want your angel blade.” 

“What?”


	87. Moving Forward

She leaned back to look at him, and he licked his lips before grinning. “Until I figure out something else that’ll work, I want your blade.” 

“You mean instead of not sparring with me when I don’t do what you want, you’ll take my blade?” Yeah, that’s exactly what he meant. He nodded, and she sat back a bit more. “But I need my blade for –“

“Do you really need it for hunting now when there hasn’t been an angel on Earth in 2000 years? Whatever else you’ve got in your weapons bag and that killing exorcism you know cover pretty much everything.” 

“What about Azazel?” 

“Don’t mess up before we see him, and you should be fine.” 

“But it crosses into everyday life, not just sex.” 

“What have you invested in this, Beth?” 

“What?” 

“I mean I left my brother and my entire life behind. I’m goin’ off to some godforsaken wasteland you call home, and what am I gonna get when I get there? Sneaky sex on the side if your Dean Winchester comes back?” 

“Probably not even that . . . I thought you said he wasn’t coming back.”

“Who knows what the hell Chuck will do?”

She didn’t say anything. Mostly, she just sat there and looked like she didn’t know what to say. He didn’t think that happened very often. Maybe he’d just made her start questioning being with him again. “What? I thought this is the way relationships are . . . something about they aren’t easy and take work. If that’s what you want with me, then I’m gonna need assurances. And if he does come back, I’m thinking I won’t let you go back to him.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I think I can do a better job.” Whether Dean really believed that or not, he wouldn’t say. He wouldn’t say whether he believed her Dean would come back either. What he’d just said was what she’d needed to hear . . . maybe not her, but those walls in her soul that had a mind of their own did. She needed to know he was serious about not walking away from her. Her Dean had done it way too many times and way too easy over the years. 

“Uh, well, I, uh . . . then no. If we’re accounting for all eventualities, and that does happen, then I can’t . . . I’ll be your friend, but I can’t –“ 

Kiss her and mean it. That’s what she’d said, so that’s what he did. She didn’t push him away, but he wasn’t really expecting tears to start falling down her cheeks after she relaxed into it. Dean slid his hand through the hair at the back of her head before he pulled back and put his forehead on hers. “What do you want, Beth?” 

Didn’t seem like what she wanted was what she was saying. “I want to go home.” He knew the place they’d been living in 1983 wasn’t what she meant, so he ruled that out. 

“Him? I know he feels like home to you.” She lost a few more tears and shook her head, so he said, “Your universe?” She shook her head again, so he tried, “Your spot in the library by the mural?” She nodded. “Why?” She didn’t say anything. “It’s your safest place?” She nodded again. “What if I want to be your safest place?” She shook her head. “Why not? I mean, I know I look like –“ 

“You don’t actually . . . You look older . . . You don’t look exactly the same.” 

He subconsciously relaxed a little more. That should make this easier, shouldn’t it? She should start getting used to him as him if he didn’t look like an exact replica of her . . . her what, her dead husband? 

“He’s not dead, or I would be.”

She didn’t say her Dean wasn’t her husband though, and a part of him was as happy by that as another part was disappointed by it, but maybe he could turn this around, because that wasn’t the point. The point was, he didn’t look like - Wait. “How much older?” 

She froze for a couple of seconds. “Few years?” 

_A few?_ “A few like a couple, or a few, like 4 or 5?” 

She was quiet again for a couple of seconds. “Like you’re hitting your peak?” 

Nice recovery. “So, like it’s all downhill from here, though, right?” 

She smiled briefly. “Didn’t say you’d hit it yet.” 

“What if I said I was at a place in my life where I want something for myself, that something being you?” She didn’t say anything, so he guessed the floor was all his. “And what if I said, what I want isn’t something I really know how to do, but . . . I want the full experience. I want you with all your baggage, cause that’s the real you, and I’ve got my own, but it’s led me here . . . So, I guess my question isn’t what do you want. It’s underneath it all, do you want what I want?” They could figure out the rest if he knew that much.

“What about the Mark?” 

“I’m gonna do everything I can to –“ 

She brought her hand up to his lips to make him stop talking and whispered, “You’ve been freaking out about it all day. You’ve said before you’re afraid it’ll kill me . . . more than once. I believe you mean what you just said about wanting something real, but . . . can you make yourself stay even if the Mark makes you hurt me?” 

No. Not if he hurt her again. She took her hand away, so he said, “I won’t go, but I won’t stay as me.” She started to shake her head, so he said, “I know when I was a demon, you wanted me to know I was enough that way, and now that I’m like me, you want to do the same thing, but there are just some lines you do not cross, and I crossed one with you. I don’t want to be that guy . . . I won’t be that guy. When I was a demon, you didn’t put up with it, and I think that’s because I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, so you wanted to let me know it was, but . . . you gave me a free pass, and you shouldn’t have . . . I won’t let you do it again.” 

“What if, as a preventative measure, I just tranq you when you start getting mad at me?“ 

He laughed for a second. She’d said that to him before when he got mad that she stole that skinwalker kill out from under him. “How mad?” 

“Any kind of mad is out?”

He laughed again. “How about when I’m giving you looks like I want to hunt you mad? I know you know the difference.” 

“Okay.”

“Okay, but then you take off, like I told you, cause I don’t know how I’ll react when I wake back up.” 

She waited for about 10 seconds, before saying, “And you’ll find me as you or Mr. Hyde?” 

“Me. If I don’t hurt you and get it under control, I’ll find you as me.” 

“And if you don’t get it under control?” 

“I don’t know, Beth. I don’t know what it’ll be like if we get to a def con 1 situation, but I’ll find you. If I don’t look right, and I don’t have black eyes, then keep running.” 

“Okay.” 

“You didn’t answer my question.” If he knew she wanted what he did, he’d jump into this with everything he had. Just the thought of her agreeing made him feel a little less like he was at war with himself . . . Kind of the way he had last night when she showed him parts of her life.

She gave him a slight nod, so he said, “You want what I want?” 

She gave him a little nod again, and he thought it might be a good idea to get back to the kissing part. Just before their mouths connected she said, “Does that mean I have to give you my angel blade?” 

He smiled briefly. He’d gone easy on her with this arrangement when he was a demon, but there was one thing he never considered then. “Yeah, but you can earn it back . . . if you even lose it.” He waited for her to agree to it. She really didn’t want to do it, but eventually she nodded, and he closed the distance between them.


	88. Figuring Out God's Plan

“You’re sure you still want to find out what’s making you heal faster?” He’d been great all afternoon. I didn’t want this to set him back.

“Yeah, I mean, I know you’re dying to run an experiment on me . . . We should do something we can see heal, so I don’t have to keep going to the hospital.” Then he just pulled a knife out of his belt and used it to cut his forearm. 

“What the hell, Dean?” 

I went to grab my first aid kit, and he said, “What? Do it all the time as a shifter test.” 

That was just silly. “Why would you do that when you can just put silver against your skin? Makes no sense.” 

Watching me tend to his arm, he grumbled, “Oh right, cause you’ve never –“ 

“Not as a test, just as a way to lure monsters towards me. If you’re coming to my universe, you might want to rethink your policy, or you’ll be cutting yourself every time you enter a camp . . . Wait. Am I supposed to leave now, so we can see if it’s because of me?” 

“Yeah, guess you messed up this experiment too.” _Damn._ I got something out of my bag to sterilize his cut, and he added, “Nah, I was thinking we could start off with the most obvious thing first.” 

“What’s that?” 

“The virtual reality thing.” 

I started wrapping his arm in gauze and said, “But how will we know it’s not just me if we don’t rule me out first?” 

“Could rule both out at the same time. It’s not like you have to be near me for it to heal if it is you.” I guess my Dean could heal me over long distances. I glanced at him to acknowledge his point, and he added, “You’re going along with this to give me some kind of hope, but we both know what it really is.” I went back to finishing his arm. “Healing like this is really a sign of me dying, right?” 

I sighed and looked at him. Is that why he’d really pushed to be with me?

“No . . . I said why I -”

“Good, because if that’s why, you’re screwed.” He gave me an unsure smile, so I said, “You're not dying. I think it’s just a sign of you healing. As far as I know, it isn’t something you did all that speedily when you had the Mark in the show I watched about the main timeline. Maybe its –“ I hesitated, and he nudged me. “Maybe it’s because you’re more centered than that Dean, who kept hunting full-time with Sam. Maybe being around your parents and having something of a normal life really is better for you.” 

“You think I should retire? That causes all kinds of other problems.” 

“I said something of a normal life, not a totally normal life. Like when we first got to this universe, it was the first time you jumped as you, and maybe that caused some turbulence, and then there was the whole thing with your Mom and should you save her or not save her, and . . . now you’ve had time to settle . . . maybe it’s a result of that. Maybe it’s really you.” 

He looked at his leg and snorted. “You know, I broke my leg before . . . didn’t do a month’s worth of healing in a day.” 

“And you didn’t have the Mark then, but I don’t think you’re healing now because the Mark is taking over. I think you’re finding a way to work with it now that you’ve . . . found a bit of balance. I don’t know what’ll happen when things around you get chaotic again, but for right now, I think you’re okay. I mean you said in the hospital that you don’t have to kill or even want to kill, that you feel like you, and I don’t know how long it’s been since you felt that way, but maybe the Mark isn’t a parasite trying to kill you. Maybe it’s more of a symbiotic thing that can help you, while you help it, and since you don’t need it to help you kill anything, it’s helping you another way.” 

Examining the bandage on his arm, Dean asked, “How are we supposed to know if it’s healing if we can’t see it?” 

I hadn’t thought of that. “Uh, well, you cut a little deep, so leave it for 15 minutes and the bleeding should have stopped.” 

When I took the bandage off, it looked the same, except now it wasn’t bleeding, and he exhaled a breath he’d been holding. “Looks like your theory about it being me is wrong.” 

“Well, your theory about it being me is wrong too . . . I’ve been here the whole time . . . Maybe it you, but you’re thinking about it too much. Maybe you do your healing in your sleep. You should go to sleep.” 

“I’m not tired. Try the virtual reality thing.” 

“Okay, but this is the last time.” 

Briefly smiling, Dean said, “No, it’s not . . . There’ll be something else you’ll want to show me to win an argument sometime, and you’ll do it again.” 

Guess I couldn’t rule that out as a possibility. “What do you want to see?” 

“Something good . . . like something from when you were a kid.” I showed him my Dad and I playing in the snow when I was little. When that was done he wanted something else, and I sighed. “I want to see when Jo shot you . . . I have a theory I’m working.” I didn’t mind showing him if it was for something like that. Kind of wish I knew what his theory was, but maybe he’d tell me when he figured it out. 

After she shot me, I asked if he was done, and he shook his head, so I kept it going all the way until Adam got me out of the house, and then he said he was done. “Ever bother you that Adam wanted to be a mechanical engineer and not a doctor in your universe?” 

“I noticed it, but I never really thought too much about it. I just figured that maybe something John said or did with Adam was different in our universe, and it led him down a different path.” 

Sitting forward, Dean countered, “Yeah, but as far as I can tell, your branch happened after Dad went on that werewolf hunt and met Rachel.” 

“My branch happened when Chuck put 10 different prophecies in my timeline and 10 tablets to go with them . . . it started in my own tree. It didn’t grow into your tree until your Dad went on that werewolf hunt.” 

He shook his head. “That can’t be right, Beth . . . Half of those prophecies had me in them, so if it started in your own tree, then why would those prophecies have said anything about me?” 

“Because all the trees are interconnected, and it shows how important your tree is if there are prophecies in other trees about you?

“You know what I think?” 

“What?” 

“I think the tree and forest analogy is way too simple for what the hell this is.” 

“Probably.” 

Dean quickly added, “Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, how did those tablets or prophecies or Dad saving Rachel change Adam’s career choice? And while we’re at it, why would Chuck start these branches? If something Sam and me did or didn’t do either happened or didn’t happen, then that’s just the way it is, so why are there branches at all?” 

Um. “I think the branches happen when something external is added or taken away? Like all 10 tablets and prophecies being in my universe, or the Amazon not being where she should’ve been in the Purgatory Dean and Sam’s timeline, or the Dean and Sam in the other universe not picking up the Madison werewolf case, or Cassie not being where you were supposed to meet her.” 

He looked a little confused. “Why would Chuck do that? I don’t get it. If he knows the Sam and Dean on the main trunk of the tree are going to resolve things with his sister the way he wants them to be resolved, then why take that chance by making all these universes where she’ll destroy everything . . . maybe that’s the only reason he calls that the trunk of the tree . . . maybe he played it out in as many scenarios as he could, and that’s the only universe where she doesn’t . . . except for yours where most of the planet got annihilated . . . It’s not like he changed things a whole hell of a lot in my life to make me any different from the Dean on the golden branch. What the hell does me meeting or not meeting this Cassie woman a decade ago have to do with anything that happened with me getting the Mark? I don’t think it does. I think Chuck made some branches for no other reason other than to have more of me and my brother that are as close to his perfect end game Sam and Dean as possible, so he could send us on this mission to clean up his mess.” 

“Sounds like Chuck. He accounts for everything.” 

Dean took a deep breath and said, “I think you were right. I think after I got cured, Chuck had his team assembled, and the rest of the universes are nothing like the universe I know or the TV show you saw. The rest of the team got split up into different universes just as messed up as yours is or this one is supposed to be.” 

“Yeah, it sounds like Chuck.”

“That doesn’t bother you?” 

“What doesn’t bother me? I already thought that. I just didn’t realize he was creating and recruiting his own pool of Sam and Dean Winchesters.” 

“No, I mean all the secrecy. Why not just tell us all that? Why let us all get to know each other and then split us up? Why turn your Dean and me into the same guy? Was it seriously just so I’m more stable? It doesn’t bother you that whichever one of the team has your daughter might die and leave her behind somewhere? What the hell kind of an operation is this?” 

“If Dad, Cas, or one of the Deans has her, she’ll be okay.” 

“How do you know that?” 

“I have faith in Dean Winchester . . . any of you . . . and my Dad and Cas.” 

“You know she was supposed to be raised by the B team if something happened to you, right? That means she’ll have the Boy Scout and his brother who don’t give a shit about anyone other than each other raising her. That Sam already cut her once. If it weren’t for Gabriel, her hand would be scarred for life . . . and you’ve got the guy like me without a Sam. How do you know he’s not drunk somewhere, and she’s not going to grow up in a universe with a useless Dad until he dies, and then she does, and you’ll never see her again?” 

“Where’s this sudden concern for –“

“I watched her be born . . . I saw what you went through when you were carrying her . . . not just with Randy and those dickheads in the woods . . . the whole thing, like you getting benched . . . When you found out. When you told me . . . all of it. I’m invested. They aren’t.”

Well, okay then. “Uh, but Cas is her legal guardian, followed by Gabriel . . . the reason Cas wasn’t with us when we did our training mission is because Chuck reminded him that Rogue is his responsibility should something happen to us.” 

“Yeah, and what if Cas and Gabriel on their own team, and neither one of them come back, and they leave her behind somewhere?” 

“Well, then we’d better hurry up and clear this universe, so we can meet up with them before that. We’re not going home until all the universes are cleared. There’s bound to be some overlap.”

“How can you be okay with this? And why the hell isn’t Chuck answering you here?” 

Well. “I’m okay with it, because I have to be.” He bowed his head and nodded, so I added, “And isn’t it obvious why he isn’t answering?” 

Dean glanced at me before he looked down again and shook his head. “If you think the only reason your universe existed is so we could have you as a recruit, and if Chuck was still answering in your universe and all the universes we’ve visited until now, then his sister was never meant to get out in those universes. We always would’ve shown up, and we always would’ve stopped her from getting out. That was the real destiny of those timelines . . . She’s loose in this universe. She just doesn’t know she can hop universes yet and maybe doesn’t think it’s worth the trouble of destroying everything when everything she sees has already been destroyed.” 

His attention had snapped back up to me, so I added, “She’s not loose right now, but in the future she will be, and if she’s out in the future and has the same power as him, she can go to any place in time just the way God can. She just hasn’t done it yet, and he can’t answer if he’s hiding.” 

Dean shook his head in disappointment. “He should’ve told you. All this time you’ve been relying on him to help you out with things, and then he just cuts out when things get hard?” 

I rolled my eyes. “I guess my Dad and Cas had a point when they both pushed me not to rely on Chuck so much.” 

Focusing on his forearm, Dean said, “Maybe if she’s out, then she’s the reason I’m being healed.” 

“She hasn’t healed the cut on your arm yet.” 

He looked up quickly, like he had an idea. “What if that’s why you and me are together? We’re the only two with Marks on the whole team. Maybe we cancel each other out, so she can’t find me or you, and that’s why he just acted like a massive douche and shoved your Dean and me together, so you wouldn’t die . . . still had a reason to going.” 

“Maybe.” 

He smiled before leaning closer and said, “Know what that means?” 

“No.” 

“Means you and me are supposed to be together . . . I mean if the whole reason I even exist is so I could go on this mission, and now I’m teamed up with you, that’s gotta mean something, right?” 

“Yeah, but –“ 

Touching his forehead to mine, Dean added, “And if Chuck’s all about training, then maybe he made the supercharged soul mates thing happen with the guy from your universe, so you could train for what it’d be like with me, since our Marks let us do a hell of a lot more than normal soulmates can.” 

“No.” 

He lifted his forearm and said, “Look.” 

I sat back and stared at his arm. It was perfectly fine again. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t do that.” 

Dean looked at my forehead and said, “No, your Mark did.” 

“No, that doesn’t make sense. That’d be unbelievably cruel if –“

“Cruel? You think a God that put 10 tablets and 10 prophecies in your universe, knowing what would happen to you; a God who gave you everything you needed to come to him wanting to get your Mark; a God who sat back and watched the rest of the world burn to the ground; you think a God like that is anything less than cruel?” 

“He isn’t cruel. He –“ 

“Tricked your Dean into taking all of you to a universe where that Dean would die, so you all could train for this mission. That wasn’t cruel?” 

“No.” 

“He’s a trickster and manipulative, but he knew we could handle it, so no.” 

Dean breathed out an exasperated laugh, and then said, “How can you think that?” 

Honestly? “It’s how the game needed to be played if he wants to win, and it’s in all our best interests if he does.”


	89. What's Wrong with This Universe

Beth really seemed to buy into this whole, Chuck was a good guy idea. “And you think it’s okay for him to use all of us as pawns in his game with his sister?” 

Beth shook her head. “I don’t think we are pawns. I think we can play the game however we want, but he had to find a way to get us all on the same board.” He and Beth were a pretty strong team, but he thought the rest of them were screwed if they weren’t all together. “I still don’t think your arm healing just now was me . . . I think it was you.” Dean waited for her to explain, so she said, “It’s just . . . maybe the forehead thing makes you feel calm.” 

Because it used to make her Dean feel calm? “You wanna try it again somewhere else? You slept with your head on my chest –“ 

She looked up at him and said, “I think I don’t want to know . . . You can think it was my Mark. I can think it was you working with yours . . . if that’s okay.” 

“Doesn’t mean anything if it’s your Mark.” 

She looked away from him, so he said, “It doesn’t mean I have to . . . that this isn’t real.” 

Beth bowed her head and said, “I was thinking more like it doesn’t make sense. I don’t have the kind of Mark you have. I don’t get any power from it. It’s not locking anything away.” 

He’d drop it for now, but maybe now was the time to bring up the big freaking lie she’d been telling him since he met her. “Maybe it is, and you just can’t see it the way you can see mine. Why is there a Mark on your soul at all? It’s just there in preparation for something that may or may not happen? Maybe he is locked away.” 

Beth started playing with the hem of one of her sleeves, and he almost smiled. Something told him that was one of her only tells, one that she only did with him. “But I’ve seen Chuck since then. Other people have seen him too.” 

That’s something he’d been trying to figure out since he was a demon. “Yeah, but is there only one of him, or is he split up into a bunch of different Chuck’s the way I am a bunch of Deans?” 

“There’s only one.” 

That was a lie. “Well, then why is there more than one of her? I mean there has to be if we’ve all been split up to deal with her in different universes. Maybe there’s only supposed to be one of him and one of her, but he’s been fucking around with all these timelines trying to figure out how to beat her, so now there’s more than one of him, and the Chuck in your camp is really a Chuck from another timeline. Maybe if He’s locked away in one universe, there’s at least one place she can’t destroy as long as she doesn’t know about it . . . like a well-hidden branch, she won’t care about if it’s already destroyed . . . Maybe all of the versions of him are in on it, but they all do things a little differently, and that’s why in some universes he does everything you ask, and in others there’s a waiting period, and in this one he won’t do anything, because he doesn’t want her to get a glimpse at you and know what he did. Maybe the thing that’s hidden in your universe is God locked away somewhere.”

Beth sighed and sat back on the couch next to him, but didn’t say anything, so he kept going.

“And the reason people attack you more now than they did when you first got your Mark is because they want Him out.”

Her attention finally flicked in his direction. “Does that make them the good guys?” 

“Not even close to it. No, the way it acts is exactly the way you’ve been saying it does . . . Bad people do bad things, and your Mark lets you see them for what they are . . . but it’s a curse as much as mine is . . . only way out of mine is a human sacrifice . . . same thing goes for yours, it’s just you’re the human sacrifice.” 

“What about Bobby? He’s not bad.” She wasn’t just going to tell him. She was going to make him work for it. 

“All right, if you don’t like bad, then weak . . . weak people do bad things.” 

“And when we got to Kansas? Excluding the hunters and most of the council, some of the same people who helped us in Wisconsin turned on us there.” 

“Think having to move to a new place might’ve picked a few more of the weak ones off. Seeing Sam there with you, and the way you were defending him and protecting him might’ve picked off a few more, but the hunters . . . the kids you’re raising . . . none of them are weak.” 

She put her head on his shoulder while she thought about what to tell him, and a minute later gave him another obstacle. “Yeah, but He should’ve gotten out when I died, right?” 

“Maybe that’s why Chuck lied to you guys and got me to say ‘yes’ to being Michael’s vessel. Maybe Cas was right, and it was Chuck’s way of trying to keep that from happening by having an angel around when you died, but Michael was a dick . . . And I’m guessing Death is in on it too . . . You still have your Mark, so maybe Chuck . . . your real Chuck, the one you met for your meeting, went back where He’d been when Death brought you back?”

She didn’t say anything. He bet he nailed it. “But you didn’t know all that back then . . . you didn’t find out until Chuck let you remember your meeting in Cold Oak . . . You didn’t even need to come on this mission. Probably better if you didn’t and stayed hidden in your universe, so why did you keep telling your team, this was something you were always going to do?”

Glancing up at him, Beth said, “My job is to protect the light in the universe . . . God is the ultimate light.” 

Dean slumped a little. She’d been telling them all, including him, in one way or another for a while now. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

Yeah, she did. He bet it was that scar on her forearm that never got healed. Bet Gabriel knew too if he told her she got it from a damn icicle, which she believed until she knew the truth. “You came up with this?”

“I was lead there, but the idea was mine. I just thought it was going to be for my universe at the time. Doesn’t change how much what he did for me meant to me.”

“So, when this is over?”

“Who knows? I have a universe to put straight. Maybe I did die when I was supposed to die, and I won’t have to worry about it for a while. Maybe I didn’t, and I’m supposed to die the way the last Dean’s Rachel did . . . maybe it’ll happen another time . . . It’ll happen when it happens.”

He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. As far as he was concerned, it was his job to keep that from happening for as long as possible, and he could. It’s not like there was anything that could stop him . . . Maybe God, but he’d figure something out. God liked games. Maybe he’d just go to Beth’s universe, kill Cain and then get his Mark off, let God’s sister out, and then screw up God’s plan.

“That’s a bit extreme isn’t it? Haven’t the kids in my camp been through enough?”

He didn’t answer that. She’d probably say she’d go to war with him again. He’d figure it out. Maybe God’s sister in that universe would be more reasonable. Getting back to this universe, Dean asked, “Do you think it means I can talk to her the way you can talk to him?”

“Maybe. Even if you got rid of it, you’d be connected to her, or I think you would be . . . I never saw what happened after your Mark came off, but I think the one on your soul stays where it is.”

“So, she can hear everything I say, or –“ 

Beth shook her head. “No, but if you said her name, she would. We’re just lucky ‘Amara’ isn’t something you say when your frustrated.” 

“You think it works for the other thing you call her?” 

Beth bit her bottom lip before she answered, “Well, Gabriel or Dad works for Dad. Chuck or God works with him. So Amara or the Darkness probably works for her . . . probably shouldn’t find that out for sure.” 

Would it really be such a bad thing if they contacted her? “What if she’s not as bad as you think? I mean He’s done some pretty bad things, or at least I think they’re wrong. I wonder if she’d think the same thing.” 

Beth looked up at him. “I don’t really see her being very sympathetic. I don’t think she knows how to feel sympathy, and I don’t think she’s going to think we’re anything other than her brother’s toys that she’s never liked.” 

“Yeah, but all we have to go on is Chuck’s word that his sister is bad. Maybe she isn’t.” 

“I think that out of all the universes he’s created, there’s a reason why he was only able to find two where she didn’t destroy everything, the main one and mine.” 

If he had no idea what Chuck was doing, because Chuck wouldn’t tell them, then he could probably judge Chuck by his actions, and Chuck had gone to an awful lot of effort just trying to find an outcome where his sister didn’t wipe everything out. Maybe Chuck’s sister wasn’t someone they could go to for help . . . unless he was out of options, and then all bets were off, but he wasn’t going to say that. He’d let Beth know he understood her point. “It’s how the game needed to be played if he wants to win, and it’s in all our best interest if he does?” 

She nodded, so he thought it was a good time to change the subject again. “So, if we got the go ahead from Mom to take the kids with us when we go, and we haven’t left, that means?” 

He put his arm around Beth, and she settled against his side. “Neither of them will grow up to get the Mark. It has to be someone else.” 

“Think you were right. We need to find out what went wrong in this universe.” 

“So can I do that tomorrow?” 

And leave him here alone? Not a chance. “Depends. You bringing me with you?” 

She smiled. “Guess that depends on how well you feel in the morning.” Another night like he had last night, and he should be okay . . . mostly. His leg and brain were healing faster than the rest of whatever was wrong with him, but he should be okay to go to the library. 

\--------------

“Hey, what’d you find?” Beth covered the monitor with her hands before she looked over at him. That wasn’t suspicious at all. “What –“ 

“It’s, uh, what if we were wrong, and us being here isn’t what changed this timeline? What if what was always going to happen was that your Mom slept through the night?” 

Honestly, if that’s what was supposed to happen here, then awesome, but it also meant he and Beth had been fighting over nothing when they got here. He looked at where her hands were covering, and she pulled them away, so he could see an old black and white picture. He smiled briefly when he recognized Sam at about 12 years of age. To Sam’s right was Dean and to his left was a little girl. Dean glanced at the headline and it was something about how they’d worked together to rescue one of their classmates from drowning in a pond. His eyes caught sight of the paper, the Lawrence Gazette. 

“We never moved? Does that mean, it’s gonna take us a few years to figure out who has the Mark, or Mom just decided to keep the status quo even though she knows the Yellow-eyed demon, Lucifer, and Michael will be after her kids some day? Or does it mean neither of those, and her knowing hasn’t changed anything yet?” 

Beth looked like she was waiting for him to pick up on something, and said, “Yeah, I don’t think anything will change until she either moves or does something with what we told her that she wouldn’t have otherwise done already . . . notice anything else?” 

No. What? Beth pointed to the little girl. Yeah, he’d seen her. “She’s the girl that we sav-“ 

Beth slid her finger down to the caption under the picture. From left to right: Millie, Sam, and Dean Winchester. “Millie?” 

Beth’s eyebrows rose. “That was your Dad’s Mom’s name, right?” 

_Fuck._

Dean sat back in his wheelie chair and brought his hands to the back of his head. “Mom didn’t die, so she had another kid?” 

Beth looked at the picture again. “At least one more.” 

What the fuck was this? Dean stood up and pointed at the screen. “This girl, my sister, could’ve been alive all along, but she isn’t because . . . Who the hell knows? Tell me again that Chuck isn’t cruel.” 

“I, uh, well . . . Rogue is one of a kind, and I’m mostly just grateful that she exists somewhere, but of course that’s because she’s mine . . . and Millie . . . maybe it’s the same. Maybe –“ 

Dean didn’t want stick around and hear her put a positive spin on this. He and Sam and just about every other version of them he’d seen or heard about hadn’t just been denied a mother their whole lives, they’d been denied a sister and who knew how many other brothers and sisters that would’ve been born if their Mom hadn’t died. That was . . . well, bullshit didn’t cover it, because it was so much worse than that.

Beth came out about 30 minutes later, and she had some print outs with her. He didn’t know if he wanted to know what else she found, but she made it easier by not telling him one-way or the other. He guessed she’d let him know when he was ready. One thing he’d made a decision on and wasn’t willing to negotiate on was this. “I want to see her.” 

Beth glanced at him, while she started the car and said, “Okay. We’ll just go back to the cabin and grab our stuff. We can be there by tonight.” 

So, Beth had already found her? He nodded towards the papers that were faced down on the seat next to him and asked, “What else?” Guess he was ready to know more than he’d thought. 

“A younger brother, and get this . . . His name is Adam. Doubt he’s the same one at all, since I’m thinking that your Dad didn’t stray from your Mom all these years, and DNA and all that would mean the kid wouldn’t be the same, but . . . it would seem that his age lines up with the other one, so I guess maybe it’s one of those fateful things where an Adam was supposed to exist in your lives . . . the outlier is Millie, just like I said about Rogue.” 

_Why does she look worried?_ “What does that mean? Adam could’ve been the one to say ‘yes’ to Michael the way he did in my universe, right?” 

“Yeah, he could have, but as for the Mark . . . I don’t think . . . see, here’s the thing. Your Mom said we could take her boys when the time was right . . . She didn’t say anything about daughters.” 

The girl was the one who got the Mark? He said that, and Beth said, “Or it could be any of the 4 of you, but because your Mom said we could take her boys and Adam hasn’t been born yet, we have to stay here until he’s born, or –“ 

“We bring Mom and Dad with us.” That was a good thing. “Did you print off the picture, so I can show Mom why she has to come with us?” 

Beth flipped the papers over, so he could see them. “Yeah, but if they come with us, whose to say that they’ll jump to the same universe we do? If they’re joining the team, then –“ 

Dean slumped before finishing her thought. “Mom and Dad could be on their own trying to do what we’re doing, and who knows how dangerous this is gonna get?” Beth nodded, so Dean said, “But if all of their kids come with us . . . they could live out the rest of their lives here without an Apocalypse, right?” 

Beth glanced at him again. “You know when your Mom said we could take you and Sam . . . Did you ever wonder what she was going to tell your Dad if she made it, and they disappeared?” 

Not really. “You think she won’t tell him if she’s still alive?” Beth shrugged. He didn’t know either. His Mom hadn’t told his Dad jack from what he could tell. 

“If all of his kids disappear, don’t you think that he’ll spend the rest of his life trying track them down?” 

Dean’s first instinct was to say no, because he grew up with a man who spent his whole life sacrificing his kids to find out what killed his wife. But the John he knew now . . . that man loved his family . . . His Dad really was a guy who just got thrown into deep end, and it wasn’t even his fault. “You think I should talk to him, explain things, maybe take him on a trip to the future, see what he wants? My guess is he’ll want his family together and will do whatever he has to do to make it to the end of the mission . . . If he knows what he’s getting into and Mom doesn't have to worry about hiding being a hunter from him, they just might make it.” 

“Yeah, something tells me that if any version of you ran into him or your Mom, your first instinct wouldn’t be to shoot.” 

He smiled, and then looked at her. “Might have something there . . . So, you’ll take Mom, and -"

"Uh, no. I'll take your Dad. You take your Mom, but divide and conquer? Definitely . . . And if your parents do come with us on this mission, something tells me that Chuck is going to hold your Mom to what she said.” 

“So, you think he’ll still make you and me be in charge of their kids?” 

Beth sighed before turning on the windshield wipers and said, “Yeah . . . I think that’s exactly what’s going to happen, and if we don’t finish up this mission before she has the other 2 kids, I wouldn’t put it past him to hand Adam off to us out of the blue, because she said, ‘boys,’ but who knows? Maybe we’ll end up with Millie too. Plus, there’s the chance that maybe your Mom and Dad jumping from universe to universe will prevent Millie and Adam from being born, but it all comes down to us giving your parents the choice.” 

“Well, even if we have to wait for Mom to have the other two, we don’t have to hang around until that happens. We could use the time spell . . . it’d speed this along, makes sure Millie and Adam are both born.” 

Beth snorted. “You want to bring an 11 year old you, an 8 year old Sam, a 6 year old Millie, and an infant with us?” 

Yeah. “I mean it’s what we’re gonna have to do anyway because of what Mom said, right? We’re already going to kill Azazel, so he can’t do anything to Sam . . . after that we’ll just be waiting around for her to have 2 more kids.” 

Beth slumped and said, “We could go further into the future, so they’re adults, and then they could make the decision on –“

“No. It has to be when they’re kids, or they’ll get split up when we jump to the next universe, and we told Mom that we’d look out for them.” 

Beth glanced in his direction. “You’re really freaked out about being split up when we jump, aren’t you?” 

Yeah, he was. He wasn’t entirely sure that he and Beth would get put on the same team again. They probably would if their Marks cancelled each other out, but if they didn’t, then they could be split up. His Mom said she wanted her kids to go with him and Beth together, so if it’d keep them all together, then this was the way it had to be done.


	90. Enlightening John

Dean knocked again and waited for his Mom to come to the door. John was my target. Mary was his. We just needed to get in the door. Of course by the time she opened it, the U-haul we’d rented started rocking back and forth, and I was torn between trying to pretend like it wasn’t and thinking that I should go tell Chewy to knock it off. The U-haul stopped rocking on its own, and Mary looked from it to Dean for some kind of an explanation. 

Giving her an awkward smile, Dean said, “Yeah, uh, Beth wanted a pet . . . skipped right over something normal, like a dog and went for a . . . cow . . . baby cow, uh . . . she wanted to save it from the slaughterhouse. Anyway, we were looking into a few things, and I think you should see something . . . about the future.” 

Mary looked back into the house behind her. “Can we do this tonight? John and the kids –“ 

I quickly said, “You really need to see it now. I can keep them occupied. I brought a few games.” I held up my weapons bag and pulled Risk out, so she could see it, and she slumped before stepping aside to let me into her house. I glanced at Dean over my shoulder, and he gave me a nod to let me know he had this. _Okay. Game on._

John was distracted by playing with the kids in the backyard . . . I took a piece of chalk out of my pocket, drew a circle on the floor in the corner and grabbing a few things from my bag. Dean still had Mary’s attention out the front, but I didn’t know how long that would last, so I made it quick. 

When I opened the back door, John smiled and gave me a wave . . . Okay here goes nothing. Waving back, I held up my bag. “Think I found a game that might be more up to your speed.” Hook baited . . . Wait for it. He told Dean to keep an eye on Sammy and came in to see what I had. Perfect. I didn’t want them being involved in his. 

Suspecting nothing, John came in and went right over to where I’d laid out a game on the counter. With his attention on the game, I moved into the circle he didn’t notice by his feet, put my hand on his shoulder, and quickly said the spell. As soon as I was done, he looked confused. “I, uh, no offense, but I’m happy with Mary. I don’t –“ 

“Oh god, no . . . Jesus, John . . . you’re like a freaking step-father to me . . . eh, no, uh, father-in-law.” He laughed and said something about me being older than him, and now that I thought about it, I guess I was. In two sentences, he’d managed to put me completely off my game. 

Going to my bag, I grabbed a handgun, and started strapping my angel blade around my leg. “Beth, I don’t know what’s going on, but –“ 

I tilted my head towards the kitchen window and said, “Take a look outside, John . . . I’d say we aren’t in Kansas anymore, but we are . . . just in the future. I just said a spell that took us here . . . I’ll bring you back in 2 days, and when I do, it’ll be at the exact same moment we left, so nobody in 1983 will know the difference.” 

_That reminds me. Better make sure I check the time. 11: 04 am._ Ignoring the fact that John was looking at me, like he thought I should be committed, I finished with my sheath, holstered my gun, and threw my duffle bag over my shoulder before grabbing him by the arm and pulling him to the window. His eyes were on me, so I pointed to the window to make him look out there. He briefly glanced outside, and then went to look at me again before doing a double take. “What the hell is this, Beth?” 

_Finally._ “September 30th, 2010 . . . about 4 months after the Apocalypse . . . Ground zero was Stull Cemetery, just outside of town.” 

Staring out the window at craters where the house next door used to stand, he muttered, “This can’t be real. You did something . . . Gave me a drug or . . . maybe you put something outside the window to make it look –“ 

He turned to go out the back door, so he could inspect the window, and I grabbed his arm. “It’s not just different outside, John. Look at the rest of your house.” That’s when his attention went to the living room. It didn’t look too bad from this angle, but as he walked through the hall, his attention went to the stairs and how they were essentially nonexistent along with most of the second story of the house. “Oh, God! Mary!” 

“She’s okay, John. She’s safe back in 1983.” 

At first, he couldn’t drag his attention away from the sight in front of him, and then his attention snapped to the back door. Running towards it he shouted, “Dean!” and I thought he should probably be a little quieter. Opening the door, he saw the backyard was empty, and then he turned to face me. “Where’s my family?” 

_Oh boy._ “1983, John . . . This isn’t a trip for them. It’s for you. You need to know what the future holds.” He hesitated and asked in wide-eyed wonder, “What are you?” 

_Wish I knew. For now, the standard answer will work._ “I’m human, John . . . a better question would be what is my husband.” 

John took a few steps closer and said, “Did he do this? Is he with Mary now? Is –“ 

I put my hand up to silence him and said, “He’s your son . . . Dean . . . from the future, and now that you’ve seen that time travel can happen, maybe you might believe that a little more . . . He’s also a hunter. So am I. So was Mary before she met you. Her Dad, and her Mom were both hunters, so they raised her in the life. We hunt the things that go bump in the night . . . vengeful spirits, werewolves, vampires, witches, rugarus, okami, pagan gods and goddesses, angels, demons . . . anything that is a threat to the human race. When we take our eye of the ball, you can see what happens to the world.” 

He gave one last lingering look out the back door before closing it, so he could pull up a chair at the table. Pulling out a bottle of whiskey, I handed it to him, and laughed briefly. “I don’t know how you’re doing this, but I’m gonna figure it out.” 

Okay. “I’ll be here every step of the way . . . Wherever you want to go. Whatever you want to do or investigate, do it. Just know that if you want to get back to your family, you need to stay with me. I know what I’m doing, and you don’t . . . yet.” 

He stared at the bottle in his hand, and I half expected him to use it to brain me, but instead, he said, “And you’re my only way back?” 

Yep. “Yeah, so killing me wouldn’t be advisable.” 

He shook his head. “Who said anything about killing you?” 

Watching him, I said, “I’ve held up under worse torture than you could ever possibly imagine, so I won’t break if that’s what you’re thinking of doing either.” 

He breathed out a disbelieving laugh. “Who do you think I am?” 

“John Winchester . . . I think I know what you’re capable of better than you do, but I’m here to help you. There are a few things you need to know . . . One is what I already told you. Mary was a hunter. Now in the universe I’m from and the universe my husband is from . . . she died on November 2, 1983.” 

That got his attention. “That’s next month.” 

“I know . . . That’s why we moved in down the road, so we could be there to try and stop it from happening, but after we went to 2005 to get Dean some medical treatment a couple days ago that –“ 

“Why did he need medical treatment?” 

“We were on an ogre hunt, and he got hurt . . . concussion, internal damage, broken leg . . . we were there for a couple of weeks, and then came back to the same day we left.” He didn’t believe that for one second, so I added, “Well, the baby ogre I saved is in a U-haul parked outside your house, so you can see it when we get back if you want to confirm.” 

“What happens to Mary?” He still wasn’t willing to believe any of this, but maybe he decided to play along for now. That’s all I needed to get my foot in the proverbial door.

“Well, she made a deal with a demon 10 years ago . . . She didn’t know what the deal entailed, just that it’d bring you back . . . You may not remember it, but the demon killed you the same night it killed her parents. Usually, a deal with a demon means that you sell your soul, but this wasn’t that kind of a deal. Instead, the demon wanted permission to come into her home. He told her as long as he was undisturbed, nobody would get hurt . . . Mary disturbed him. The demon put her on the ceiling and set her on fire when you came into the nursery. You grabbed Sam, handed him off to Dean, and told him to take him outside, but there was nothing you could do for Mary. You spent the next 20 years trying to avenge her by going on every hunt you could . . . dragged your kids across the country from hunt to hunt and trained them how to be hunters too even though that’s the last thing she would’ve wanted. She wanted out of the life. She didn’t want her kids to be raised in it because the life of a hunter is tragic and bloody and full of heartache . . . You became the best hunter of your time, and Dean and Sam became the best hunters of all time . . . But that isn’t what was supposed to happen here. In this universe, Mary was supposed to sleep through the night, and your kids were never raised as hunters, and look at what happened to world, because they weren’t.”

Still playing along until he could get me to drop my guard, John asked, “Why are you showing me all this?” 

“Short version? Because Dean and I are on a mission to keep God’s sister from being released . . . That mark on his arm is what’s keeping her in a cage, and if it’s removed, she’ll get out and destroy, not just this universe, but every universe her brother has ever created, and I don’t mean she’ll destroy it, the same way this Apocalypse has destroyed everything. I mean that she’ll kill God, the sun, and erase everything. It’s why she was locked up. If God is the Creator and brings life, then she does the opposite. Mary has already volunteered for us take Sam and Dean with us when we go to the next universe, and normally, her giving her consent for something like that would’ve been enough for us to move onto the next place, except it didn’t this time, and it didn’t because Mary was always supposed to live in this universe, which means you’ll have two more kids, a girl and a boy, and one of them must get the Mark. 

Now Dean and I could just head into the future, not this far into the future, but a little further, and get the kids after she has them, but even if it’s what Mary wants, it wouldn’t be right for your kids to disappear and for you to never know why or where they went . . . Dean and I –“

“Why wouldn’t she have told me all this?”

“She doesn’t want you to know she’s a hunter . . . Probably doesn’t want to get the looks you’re giving me . . . Anyway, Dean and I have talked about it, and we want you and Mary to come with us. You may not jump into a universe with us, but if you keep going and keep your kids in that universe from unleashing the Darkness, then you’ll go onto the next universe and the next until you eventually end up in my universe, where you and Mary can raise your kids the right way. 

I went through an Apocalypse too, but we’re rebuilding . . . It’s where Mary wants her kids to be raised, because all of the bad things that were supposed to happen to them have already happened in my home universe, and they can have a blank slate. There’s a catch, but I won’t tell you what it is now, because I don’t want you to make any hasty decisions because of what you’re seeing now and end up jumping without your wife. You need to be a team, and I need to make you believe me and start training you for what’s ahead. That’s the game . . . I promised Dean we’d only be here for 2 days. We can spend those 2 days hiding out here in your bombed out house, or we could get out there and see what this universe has to offer. When I’m sure you won’t shoot me, I’ll give you a gun.” 

He finally opened the bottle of whiskey and took a swig before he snorted and said, “You call that the short version?” I nodded, so he said, “If all that’s true, then I’m guessing you have a story to tell me about how you got attacked in your own home? Let me guess. A monster –“ 

“Dean did it . . . The Mark on his arm makes him have to kill, because it’s tied to God’s sister that wants to destroy everything. We were having an argument, it took over, and he stabbed me . . . When you saw me on the couch . . . Mary, her uncle, and her cousin did that because Dean wanted her to know that me being attacked wasn’t my fault. He showed her the Mark, and she had a loose idea of what it was. She didn’t want it near her family, so they roughed me up, intending to send a message to Dean . . . You know the typical, ‘this is what you can expect to happen to her if you don’t leave,’ kind of message . . . Dean and I are soul mates, so he heard me calling for him in my head, because soul mates can read each other’s mind . . . That’s why he ran to our house for no apparent reason and why your son could hear me calling for him too . . . Anyway, that’s when Dean told Mary that he was her son, and that’s why she went from wanting us out of the neighborhood to letting us watch her kids while you 2 went off on a honeymoon . . . We told her she was supposed to die, but that we wouldn’t let it happen. I guess maybe she wanted one last hoorah if we couldn’t save her, but that was before we figured out she was never supposed to die in this universe.” He didn’t look like he knew what to say to that, so I added, “That’s why the best thing to do when you get sent to a new universe is to keep Dean or anyone else in your family from getting the Mark in the first place. God sends us to points in time when we’re needed, and we picked up the Dean you know after he got the Mark.” 

John sat forward and said, “But this Mark can be removed?” I nodded. “Why haven’t you two removed it yet?” 

“Because it requires a spell from an evil book, called the Book of the Damned, and part of the spell is a human sacrifice . . . He doesn’t want someone else to die for him.” 

John stepped into interrogation mode a little more as his interest increased. “How’d he get it?” 

I leaned back against the counter to appear more relaxed. “Cain from Cain and Abel . . . Lucifer was trying to corrupt Abel, so Cain went to him and said he’d take his brother’s place if Lucifer left Abel alone. Lucifer agreed on two conditions. Cain had to take the Mark from him, and he had to kill Abel and send him to Heaven himself. Cain did it to save his brother, but after his brother was gone, Cain could feel what the Mark was doing to him, the bloodlust it created, and he killed himself. As soon as he did, the Mark brought him back as a Knight of Hell, they’re the most powerful demons. Cain, as a demon, fell in love with a woman named Colette sometime around the Civil War, and they were married. His demon crew that he gave up to be with Colette kidnapped her, so Cain killed them all trying to find her. When he did find her, Abaddon, the last Knight of Hell other than him, was possessing Colette, and in the altercation, Colette was fatally injured just as Abaddon was leaving her body, so Abaddon got away. 

As Colette lay dying in Cain’s arms, she made him promise not to kill anymore, so he retired. Fast-forward 150 years, and Dean is hunting Abaddon. He finds out about Cain and after a pretty violent interview, where Dean killed a handful of Abaddon’s demons, Cain decided that Dean was worthy of the Mark and gave him a copy of it, so Dean could kill Abaddon. The only problem was that in order for Dean to get away from a fresh onslaught of demons, Cain had to kill them, and just like an addiction, once he fell off the wagon, he started killing again . . . The only thing that can kill someone with the Mark of Cain is someone else with the Mark of Cain, so Dean was the one who could stop him, which left Dean as the last one standing with the Mark when he killed Cain. That means that when Sam got it removed behind Dean’s back, God’s sister was released . . . Or that’s the way it would’ve gone. I met this Dean when he was a demon, so he hadn’t killed Cain yet. He joined our mission, and that saved his universe. He got cured of being a demon, and now he’s the man you know. If you stop those things from happening at any point up to when Sam gets the Mark removed, then she won’t be released.” 

John took another drink, and I think he was getting tired of the game, because he just sat back and shook his head. “You wanna know why Henry disappeared?” He looked confused, so I said, “Your Dad, Henry Winchester . . . He was a Man of Letters. If hunters are fighters, then Men of Letters are like the researchers who dig up every bit of lore that’s out there, so they are experts on all of these things too. Abaddon killed his entire chapter house here in the US, because she wanted the key to Men of Letters bunker. Your Dad took it and did a blood spell trying to get home to you, but instead he got sent 50 years into the future and dropped out of a closet in front of your sons . . . Abaddon followed him through the portal, and he died saving Sam from her. That’s why he didn’t come back, and that’s why Dean had to find a way to kill her.” Yeah, I figured that would break through. It was an attack I was expecting, so I was ready for it. He was good, but he was out of practice. 

“Feel better? Get that out of your system,” I asked backing away from him. He sat up from the floor and checked his lip for blood. “You can take it or leave it, but everything I’ve said is the truth, and if your Dad disappeared in this universe, I’m willing to bet the same thing is going to happen with Abaddon showing up in the future, which is why one of your kids will get the Mark . . . And I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to protect you and make sure you make it back in one piece . . . Speaking of which, you might want to liven up . . . Think we have incoming.” 

He went from giving me an intense glare to looking around the house. That’s when he heard it and got to his feet. “What is that?” 

I didn’t know. “Head up stairs . . . We need to hide in plain sight somewhere with a higher vantage point that we can control.” 

I still don’t think he believed me. He refused to move from his spot. “Fine. Stay down here and get captured. I’ll follow from a distance, see where they take you, and get you back.” 

I just wanted to get him moving. I didn’t actually intend for that to be what happened. Taking a running start, I used the stair wall next to a massive hole in the stairs as a springboard, and grabbed ahold of the lowest stair I could before pulling myself up, and turning to wait for him when I got to the top. All he did was stand at the bottom and look up at me. “Come on, John . . . this isn’t a game you want to lose.” 

That’s about all I had time to say before something broke down the front door, and I had to hide. Watching John, I saw him put his hands up to show he wasn’t armed and waited for whatever this task force was to surround him, so I could see what we were dealing with in the way of monsters. I think John thought the Calvary was saving him at first, but that illusion wore off quickly. Black eyes . . . demons. I didn’t see any Croats. Not a bad start. Maybe seeing the killing exorcism in action would start to make John see things a little more clearly, or at least get him on my side.


	91. Not My Parents

“Okay, so you and Beth can take my sons and daughter with you when you go. Is that what you wanted to hear?” 

“No. What I want is for you to say you and Dad will come with us. I’m not saying that it’ll be easy. You’ll probably have to jump into different universes without us, and me and Beth are gonna have to fill you two in on –“ 

“No, John isn’t cut out for –“ 

Dean laughed. “You have no idea what Dad can do. He –“ 

“He’s a good man. I won’t have him be pulled into this life.” 

For Dad or her? “You’re more like him than I thought . . . willing to give up your kids lives just so you can be together –“ 

Dean recoiled as the slap connected. If she’d drilled him with an uzi, it probably would’ve hurt less. “I’m sorry . . . It’s just –“ 

Dean turned away from her. Just needed to buy Beth a little more time, but he didn’t know if he had it in him to do it right now. That’d been just about the last thing he expected to happen. 

It seemed like his body decided to go on without him, or maybe it was Beth’s Dean, because he heard his voice say, “I know my Dad better than you . . . See, I got 27 years with him . . . I know what kind of a man he is and isn’t . . . So believe me when I say if his kids all vanish without a trace, there is no way in Hell, he’s just gonna let that lie . . . and if he finds out, you’ve been lying to him, even signed them away without telling him –“ 

Dean stopped when he heard a different voice behind him ask, “What’s in the U-haul?” It wasn’t the voice of the easygoing mechanic he’d gotten to know in the last two months. That was the voice of the drill sergeant he’d known most of his life. It put him on edge and made him feel relaxed at the same time. 

When Dean turned to look at his Dad, he noted the cuts and bruises, and looked at Beth, who was standing behind his Dad. “You were supposed to protect him.” 

Beth smiled before she looked at John with admiration. “I did . . . I might’ve given him the split lip, but the rest was all training.” 

Dean’s Mom looked like it was starting to dawn on her that they’d filled his Dad in on a few things, and then she turned on Beth. “What did you do?” 

John walked past her towards the U-haul, and Dean ran past him to get there before he could open it. “Might want to reconsider doin’ that in broad daylight.” 

“What’s in it?” 

Looking around to make sure nobody could hear, Dean whispered, “A baby ogre . . . I mean it’s about the size of Beth, but you should see what they look like when they grow up.” His Dad’s look wasn’t giving anything away, but Dean would say his Dad was about 10 seconds away from blowing his top. “Look, I know it was a harsh way to prove a point, but –“ 

His Dad pulled a flashlight that Dean recognized as one of Beth’s out of his pocket and said, “Open it up . . . I want to see it.” 

Dean glanced towards Beth, who had her hands full with his Mom, and took a deep breath before he reluctantly unbolted the door and slid it up a couple of feet, so his Dad could get a look inside without everyone else on the block being able to see what was in there. 

As soon as his Dad flipped off the flashlight and stood up, Dean slammed the door closed. “What the hell is something like that doing in this neighborhood?” 

“We, uh, we killed it’s parents, and Beth figured out that they had a kid, but if it hasn’t killed . . . she didn’t want to kill it, and she didn’t want it to starve, so she’s planning on teaching it to eat pigs. We couldn’t just leave it there in case it started killing people on its own, and she didn’t want a pack of wolves or something to turn it into dinner . . . See, she has this rule about killing good monsters, and I do too . . . If they don’t kill, then they get a pass, but finding a monster like that is rare, like 1 in a 10,000 kind of rare, and this is the first monster I’ve ever seen that can’t pass as human. I’m not really sure what to do with it . . . Might try bringing it with us to Beth’s universe . . . Not much in the way of civilization is left there, and everyone that is alive knows what monsters are, but they have limited food supplies as it is, so I guess we’ll have to see when we get there.” There’s no way he could’ve ever said any of that to his Dad. Zero-tolerance on monsters was always his Dad’s policy, but this John Winchester was just learning. 

His Dad leaned closer and asked, “And you were in the future getting medical treatment the last couple of weeks?” _Yeah. Where is this question going?_ Dean nodded with a look that suggested he was waiting for the next question, and his Dad said, “That’s where you found out we’re gonna have 2 more kids?” 

“Yeah, it was a surprise to me . . . I’m thinking they are one of a kind, just like Beth’s daughter.” 

His Dad stood back. “Daughter?” 

Shit. Beth and his Mom must not have told him about that. Dean pulled out one of the printouts he’d shown his Mom and said, “We found this . . . My Mom died when I was 4, so she couldn’t have had any other kids, and I don’t know how much Beth told you about this universe thing, but in any other universe I’ve been in or heard about, it was always the same. Mom died, and Sammy was it, but here . . . Millie . . . that was your Mom’s name, right?” 

His Dad nodded while studying the picture, and Dean got another piece of paper to show his Dad. “Beth pulled up some school records at schools your other kids attended and found Adam Winchester too . . . You should probably know that I had a half-brother named Adam, and they’re the same age . . . That’s the way things work in these universes . . . There’s like a common thread that holds them all together, and sometimes it’s easy to see and other times, you really have to look hard to find them . . . Beth calls it Fate, and it’s hard to change it. Anyway, I never found out about him until a couple years after my Dad was gone . . . My Adam never knew anything about hunting or us, and some monsters my Dad hunted back in the day killed him to try and draw my Dad out. Got me and Sam instead . . . the angels brought Adam back and got him involved in the Apocalypse me and Sam stopped.” 

While his Dad examined that document, Dean pulled out a photo he’d had made while they were in the future and put it on top of the others. “And this is Beth’s daughter . . . She’s mine too . . . It’s hard to explain, but I’m her Dad and not her Dad at the same time, and I feel like she’s all mine now . . . Guess, you could say if you were ever going to have a granddaughter, this is her . . . Her name is Rogue.” 

One of his Dad’s eyebrows arched while he went from looking at the picture to Dean. “Rogue Winchester?” 

Dean snorted and said, “Yeah, that one was all Beth . . . She blames it on the baby, says she gave her a choice, and that’s the name Rogue picked, but it was mostly Beth.” 

His Dad looked at the picture again and shook his head. “You’re not the Dad, but you wanna be?” 

“Kind of feels like she’s mine, because her Dad and I got fused together . . . it’s confusing, but –“ 

His Dad exhaled a deep breath and said, “I’d say it’s more confusing for her than you . . . you all look the same?” 

“Beth says I look a little older, but basically, yeah, we all look exactly the same, act the same, just have different levels of being screwed up . . . same goes for the Sam’s and Cas’s . . . Castiel is an angel . . . You could say he’s family, not family, like Beth’s Dad is, but brothers in arms kind of –“ 

“Beth’s Dad is an angel?” 

_Didn’t tell him that either, huh?_ “Yeah, he’s the archangel Gabriel.” 

His Dad took a step back and said, “So, that makes her?” 

Dean sighed. “She’s not an angel or a nephilim. She’s human, but she’s a little different . . . it’s a long story for another day.” 

Felt weird to be the one in a level of authority. It felt like his Dad was his padawan and friend, not his Dad. John finally said, “You’re the one who stabbed Beth?” 

Dean felt his forearm tingle slightly. “Yeah, I did . . . I don’t know what she told you, but it was my fault. She had nothing to do with it . . . We were –“ 

“She pulled the same trick on you that she just did me . . . I know. Had more than one go at her myself, and she didn’t even tell me I couldn’t save Mary . . . Instead, she told me why my father took off when I was a kid.” 

“Sounds like her.” 

His Dad hesitated and then asked, “Is it true? You met him?” 

Dean nodded. “Yeah, came running out of a closet in a motel where me and Sam were staying. I didn’t want anything to do with him at first, because he did a runner on you. When he found out he never went back home, he took off on us trying to get back to you, but then Abaddon got ahold of Sam, and he helped me get Sam back . . . He helped us trap her, but he didn’t make it.” 

His Dad glanced at Dean’s arm. “And she got loose again?” 

Yeah, in one of the worst decisions he and Sam ever made, she got loose again. “Yeah, I got the Mark to get rid of her permanently.” His Dad was taking this pretty well, all things considered, but it wasn’t lost on Dean that his Dad had yet to even look in his Mom’s direction.

“Did you see anything good while you were in 2010, or –“ 

His Dad looked at the back door of the U-haul and said, “I’m gonna talk to Mary, and if she’s not willing to show me what it is you all do, then you and Beth are taking me on one of these hunts . . . I’ve had my fill of demons for now. Saw nothing but demons for the last 2 days, so anything from a different menu will work.” 

Okay. Spirits were easy, or relatively easy compared to most things. Dean gave him a nod, and his Dad turned to go back towards the house before he stopped and said, “Speaking of demons, you need to get that thing off of your arm . . . Only way I’m going on this mission is if it goes . . . not right now. I know that maybe with some of the things you’re gonna be up against on this mission, you’ll need it, but when you get home . . . It needs to go.” 

Dean’s hand came up to the back of his neck. “I can’t . . . won’t let someone die for me. I’ve got a pretty good handle on it now, and I won’t let it –“ 

“That won’t last forever when you start seeing your friends and family dying off without you. Trust me. Every time it happens, a little part of you dies with them.” 

Yeah, he knew that all too well, but he hadn’t really thought about his Dad knowing what that was like at this age. His Dad had never talked about that side of the war. “I know. I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever cared about, sometimes more than once, but it’s my responsibility to –“ 

His Dad shook his head. “No, it’s not . . . It’s called the Mark of Cain for a reason, and he’s still alive and well in her universe.” 

Didn’t matter. Who was going to deal with Abaddon when she showed up, or Cain if he fell off the wagon? “You know your wife already agreed to let your kids come with us whether you do or not, right?” 

His Dad threw a look towards the porch and said, “Yeah, I think my wife and I have more than a few things to discuss, and I think your wife needs an ice pack.” 

What? Dean watched Beth stomp down the porch and Mary slam the door shut behind her and sighed. Beth glanced at him on her way past and said, “I deserved it,” before she jumped into the passenger side of the truck. 

\--------------------

“You think she left them with us to make sure we didn’t go with them?” Dean looked at the baby Sam in his arms, and Beth added, “Because I’m more than a little surprised that your Mom left them with us after what happened the other day.” 

It wasn’t a bad thing if Mary wanted to take the reigns on training John in on how to do this. Should strengthen their team. Beth glanced Dean and said, “You know you’ve been doing that a lot since the other day.” 

“What?” 

“Calling her Mary and him John . . . No more Mom and Dad.” 

Dean shrugged and said, “They’re not my parents . . . doesn’t feel right calling them that.” She was surprised by his answer, so he added, “I mean, it’s like you said, they’re both younger than us, right? And I don’t know . . . with him I feel almost the way I do with Sam, like I have to look out for him, like he’s a brother or something, and with her . . . I don’t know her . . . Everything about her just seems like one big lie . . . She doesn’t even know how to make a freaking pie . . . She buys it already made and warms it up in the oven . . . Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but she’s not my Mom, or she isn’t the one I remember anyway.” 

Beth decided to drop it for now and came over to take Sam from him. She gave Sam a big smile, and Sam giggled back. “I’ve got these two if you want to follow John and Mary to make sure they’re all right. Should be an easy hunt, but she’s probably rusty, and he’s a complete rookie.” 

_Is she serious?_ “What about Chewy? How are you gonna keep an eye on them and him?” 

They’d finished off the shed for him yesterday. Building it together had been kind of fun. He hadn’t done construction since he lived with Lisa, and he’d hated it then, but building a home for an ogre had put a weird twist on it. He was actually kind of proud of the results. After a bit of coaxing they’d finally got Chewy to come out of the truck and go to his new home. Right now, he seemed pretty shy and got scared easily, but who knew what he’d do once he got used to being around people? 

“The butcher is dropping off some things tomorrow I’m going to try him out on, and these guys are –“ 

Maybe he needed to make himself clear. “John and Mary need to learn how to do this on their own if they’re coming with us on this mission.” 

Beth watched him for a few seconds before reluctantly saying, “Okay . . . Good. I wouldn’t mind having your help.” 

He smiled briefly. “Knew I should stay where I was needed.” 

Beth looked at Sam and said, “Not needed, wanted . . . There’s a difference, isn’t there, Sam,” before she carried him into the kitchen to give him dinner.


	92. Expect the Unexpected

“All right. So, how does this work?” 

Dean and I shared a look and decided that he’d take the lead on this one. He talked less and was able to get the point across more. “We’ve gotta give you all the facts, so you can make an informed choice. If you want to do it, then you’re in, and we go somewhere else . . . could be at any time in another universe, and then you’ve gotta figure out why you’re there. We made a journal for you guys . . . It’s got dates and world events, so you can tell roughly what’s supposed to be going on with me and Sam . . . should be able to help you find us.” 

Dean handed his Dad the book, and John flipped through it. “This is that Fate thing you were talking about . . . the big things that are similar between these universes?” Dean nodded, so John asked, “And it’s in case we get separated from you two?” 

“Yeah, it’s got a few useful things in it you can use too, like places to go to get what you need for the time spell, the spell, and the killing exorcism in case you run up against any more demons. Mary should know what to do with any monsters you come up against.” 

Mary, who was now in full-hunter mode and had been since I stole her husband and took him to an Apocalyptic future, asked, “What else do we need to know?” 

Dean looked at his Mom and said, “God takes the wording of the things pretty seriously, so when you said me and Beth could take your kids, he’s gonna hold you to that. It means that if we do get separated, they’ll be with us, not you.” 

I quickly added, “But once the mission is over, we’ll all be reunited in my universe.” 

She and John shared a look, and then John said, “And when we die, there’s nothing waiting for us on the other side?” 

Yep. I wasn’t giving any of the people coming with us the idea that they could stick around if it made them think they could just erase the other versions of them in my universe. I think I might’ve been wrong about these people all merging, and my wrong thinking on the subject is what gave Demon Dean and then God the idea to do what he did . . . if Chuck just didn’t just trick me into thinking that’s what he’d do, so what happened would happen. He was tricky . . . Anyway, right now everyone was getting along. I didn’t want them to start turning on each other and trying to wipe out the versions of people in my universe who rightfully belonged in my universe, and that included our Mary and John Winchester. 

“Anything else?” 

Well, there was one more thing. I looked at Dean, and he didn’t look like he wanted to be the one to say it, so I said, “There is the chance that if you do this now, Millie and Adam won’t be born, because the circumstances surrounding their, uh . . . conceptions will be different, so we were thinking that we could go ahead and jump into the future after Adam is born, and you guys could make your decision when you see us again. It’d feel like a couple of seconds for us, but you’d actually get another 7 years here with your family.” 

Mary stood up and asked John if they could talk out in the kitchen, and they left Dean and I alone. “What do you think?” 

Dean glanced towards the kitchen with a snort. “I think I’m glad I didn’t have to think about all of this stuff when I made my choice.” 

“Yeah.” 

“What would you do?” 

“I’m here, aren’t I?” 

“I mean would you go now or in 7 years?” 

Right. Uh. “I’d want my kids to be older.” 

Dean nodded in thought before he said, “You’re just saying that because you want these kids to be older, so they’re easier for us to take care of, right?” 

I smiled. “Pretty much.”

John and Mary came back into the living room looking like they had something to say, so Dean put his hand up to stop them. “Whatever you decide, you need to talk to your kids first to explain why they won’t be seeing you for a while, and me and Beth have one more thing to take care of –“ 

I interrupted him. “Two more things.” 

He rolled his eyes and said, “We’ve got two more things to take care of here before we go, one we’re gonna do tonight, and the other we’ll do over the next couple of days.” 

His parents shared another look, and his Mom asked, “What are you two going to take care of tonight.” 

Something I wasn’t really looking forward to doing, because I didn’t know how Dean was going to react to it. “We’re going to summon Azazel and kill him. Not exactly sure whether or not the angels are gonna get involved when they see what we’re doing, but we need to get rid of him, so he doesn’t keep infecting children with his blood.” 

His Mom didn’t say anything, so his Dad said, “And the other thing?” 

That one was mine. “There’s a serial killer family in Hibbing, Minnesota that needs to be stopped. They kidnap people and then hunt them like wild animals for sport before using their skin and bones to make furniture and eat what’s left.” 

They both laughed until Dean and I didn’t, and then his Mom said, “We don’t kill people. If you do that, then you’re no better than they are.” 

Uh. “Who said anything about killing them?” 

Dean looked at me and added, “Did you say that’s what we were gonna do?” 

Nope. I looked at his Mom and said, “I’m just going to disappear for a couple of days, Dean’s going to file a missing person’s report with the local sheriff, and then I’m going to turn back up a little bloody, so I can lead the cops in the right direction. Once they set foot inside that family’s farm house with all its trophies, they’ll be arrested,” before I looked at Dean and added, “Oh, and we didn’t do anything about the town in Indiana either.” 

Dean slumped. “We can’t stay here forever hunting down all the things we’ve hunted in our lives.” 

“I know that, but that one will save 44 people over the next 22 years, and how many will die after that now that you and Sam won’t be here to stop it then?” 

Muttering, Dean said, “The same number that would’ve died anyway, because me and Sam didn’t grow up to be hunters here, Beth.” 

Oh, right. “Yeah, but we’re here now, so it’s our responsibility to handle it, isn’t it?” 

Dean exhaled slowly before looking at his parents, and his Mom said, “We made our choice. We want to go now.” 

I think Dean had just enough time to start forming micro-expressions that said, “What the hell?” before I was sitting on the ground alone in the woods.

 _Well, if she wanted to test out whether or not we were full of crap, I guess that was one way to do it._ It looked like the sun had gone down not that long ago, so there was still some light, just enough for me to know that nobody else had shown up yet. It was foggy, and it was cold. I could see my breath. Did my bags accompany me? I looked around and found them about 4 feet away. That was a little weird. Usually they were right by my feet, but it seemed like they and I had just been thrown here. 

By the time I got to my feet and went over to find a jacket out of my bag, I was still the only one here. Maybe Chuck decided to – 

_What the fuck is that?_ My attention snapped to the left as I heard a second anguished wail fill the night. “Chewy?” 

Picking up my bags, I grabbed my HK P30 out of my waistband, started running in that direction and whisper-yelled, “Chewy?!” I heard the cry again and finally saw him. He was on his knees and crying. “Chewy . . . It’s me, Beth . . . Are you –“ 

He dropped his hands from his face when he heard me, and there was something not quite right with him. I took out a flashlight, so I could get a better look. “What the –“ 

Was the pork making him look like that? I thought he’d been adapting to it pretty well as long as it was covered in human blood from a blood bank to mask the flavor. He went to hide his face again, so I grabbed one of his wrists and held it down, so I could get a better look at him. His face looked okay, but his neck was another story. Black veins. I’d never seen anything like that. 

Holding his head between my hands, I took a look at his eyes. They seemed okay. I stuck my tongue out at him to try and let him know I wanted to see his tongue, and he gave me something of a grotesque smile instead and relaxed. “You’re just scared. It’ll be okay. Sometimes stress can do pretty damaging things to our bodies. You mind if I have a look at your blood? Maybe I can run some tests on it when we get out of here and figure out some kind of ogre medicine for you.” I don’t think he knew what I was talking about, but it made me feel better to say it. 

I turned to grab a syringe out of my bag, and he howled. _What the hell?_ I held onto his hands again to keep them from hitting me. He wouldn’t have meant to hurt me, but he started lashing out in what looked like pain, or he did until I touched him. Then he relaxed again. “Okay . . . maybe you need physical touch to reduce your stress?” 

It was right around that time that I heard a baby crying somewhere in the distance. “What do I do?” I looked at Chewy and decided to hold his hand while I picked my bags up and dragged him with me towards the baby. 

It was a continuous cry, so I found it pretty quickly despite my limited visibility. “Sammy? Holy shit. Fuck.” I quickly dropped Chewy’s hand and ignored his shrieking, so I could pick Sam up. He had black veins snaking their way across his face. As soon as I picked him up, he stopped crying. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned to see who’s it was. Just Chewy. He sniffled a little, but calmed down . . . kind of like Sam. “What the fuck is happening, Sam? Could use your adult brain right about now.” 

My eyes scanned the woods in our immediately vicinity, it looked like we were alone . . . looked like. I couldn’t really see past the fog, so it was hard to tell if we really were. Maybe the rest of my team was here, I just couldn’t see them, and they were being quiet the way I’d tried to be in case there were monsters around. 

_”Dean? If you’re here, call out for me, and I will find you.”_

I heard a tiny voice in my head say, “I don’t feel very good, Beth.” 

Oh no. “Dean! Sammy’s sick too. He needs you . . . He needs you to yell, so he can find you!” I heard a kid moan not too far away. “That’s good, Dean! Do it again . . . try to hit a tree with a stick, so I can hear it if you can’t yell.” I heard some bushes rustling to my right and carried Sam that way with Chewy holding firmly to my shoulder. Rounding the bush, I found an almost lifeless little boy layed out on the ground. 

Shifting Sam to my other hip, I knelt down, so I could roughly sit Dean up and prop him up against my leg. I couldn’t pick him up because of my bags though. “Here Chewy. Hold onto these for me.” I took them off and put them around his neck, which confused him, but then he patted them, like he was considering them a gift. We really needed to get him a toy; one of those giant stuffed animals might work. When I was sure he wouldn’t throw my bags on the ground or start rummaging through them, I knelt down to get a better look at Dean. His breathing seemed a little better, and he was more alert than he’d been when I first saw him. 

He was still in his pajamas, and I guess Sam was too. It was way too cold for them to be dressed like this. “Hold onto my leg, Dean.” I waited until he’d latched on before I turned at the waist to unzip my bag. Chewy grumbled a little, so I told him, “No,” and he bowed his head. He was really sensitive to harsh words. “I’ll get you something when we get out of these woods, okay?” The tone of my voice seemed to perk him up some, and then I proceeded to grab my jacket, handed it down to Dean, told him to put it on, and then grabbed one of my sweatshirts, so I could put it on Sam. “You’re looking a little better already, Sam.” 

Kid Dean looked up at me after he'd put my jacket on. “Can I see him?”

“Sure. Stand up . . . just keep a hold of my leg okay?” 

He nodded before getting to his feet, and I bent down to show him his baby brother. He tenderly pulled back the sweatshirt to see Sam's face, and then looked down at his own hands before saying, “I have the same thing he does?” 

I looked at his hands, and yeah, there were black veins there too. He had them on his neck and face too. He wasn’t on death’s door anymore, so whatever it was must be getting better for him too. “Yeah, but I think you’re both getting better . . . Come here. Help me pick you up, and we’ll see if we can find anybody else, okay?” He nodded, and reached his arms up towards me, so I hefted him onto my other hip and took a deep breath to stay calm. I always tried to stay calm around kids, so they thought I knew what I was doing. It’s what they neede when they were scared.

“Where’s Mom?” 

_I wish I knew._ So far whatever was wrong with this universe was making kids, both human and monster, sick, because I was fine, but who knew how long that would hold out? Maybe I was getting sick too, and it was just taking longer to affect me. “We’ll see if we can find your parents. We need to find my Dean too.” 

He nodded tiredly and rested his head on my shoulder, but I didn’t think it was a good idea for him to go to sleep until I figured out what was making him sick. “You mind helping me yell? You could call for your Mom and Dad, and I could yell for Dean?”

Looking up at my face, he asked, “You think they might be sick too?” 

Maybe. “We need to find them to try and keep them from getting sick. Can you help me do that?” 

He nodded tiredly again, and started yelling for his Mom and then his Dad, and in between his yells, I called for Dean. We’d wait a few seconds after our timed yells to see if we got a response, and then started over again. We got a little rhythm down, and turned it into a game, I guess, because he started laughing when it was time for our pauses. 

During one of our breaks, I heard a voice call back. It was loud and strong. It was a voice I knew. Our little entourage started heading in that direction. It took about 10 minutes, but we eventually found Dean. He was kneeling over someone. “Stay back . . . You need to go . . . I don’t know what this is, but it might be contagious. I don’t want –“

 _Who is he kneeling over? Maybe it's the kids' Mom or Dad._ “Who is it?” He shook his head. “I need to know if I have to take them away from –“ 

He finally looked back at me, and he had the black veins too. He took in the sight of me and then looked at the kids before he looked down at the body and said, “It’s not . . . It’s not one of them . . . It’s Cas.” 

“Cas?” 

“He didn’t . . . whatever this is. He got it . . . I don’t know how long –“ 

“Do you feel sick?” He didn’t answer. He just went back to looking at Cas. “Dean, he’s not your Cas.” 

“I know, but I haven’t seen him in . . . and he’s an angel. If it got him . . . what are we –“ 

My heart fell a little before I said, “Maybe he wasn’t an angel.” Dean looked back at me, so I tried to explain. “What if he was my Cas? Is he wearing a trench coat?” 

Dean hesitated before standing up and stumbling over to us. “They’ve got it too. Why don’t you?” 

I didn’t know, so I made something up to try and make him feel better. “Maybe we switched roles. Maybe I can heal you, and you take this kind of thing for me?” He relaxed a little, so I added, “Are you in pain? Chewy seemed to be in pain, and Sam was screaming. Dean was pretty sick and could barely move.” 

Dean looked at kid Dean and smiled briefly. “You’re feeling better now, though, huh?” Kid Dean nodded, and Dean looked at me. “You want me to take him?” 

“No. I think for right now, you should do what Chewy is doing until we can find somewhere to get the kids out of the cold and figure this out.” 

Looking around, Dean asked, “You see Mo-“ before he looked at kid Dean and changed it to, “Mary and John?” 

_No, but if they were here, I think they had enough time to answer when I was calling. I don’t think whatever this is makes you so sick that you die instantly, so I’m thinking they went somewhere else._

Dean sighed before he shook his head and hugged the kids and I to his chest. “Can’t believe they signed on like that . . . Hope to God they didn’t end up somewhere like this.” 

_Me too._

“So, what’s the plan?” 

_We can’t stay here . . . not the woods . . . I mean -_

“You think maybe we should get out of this moment in time?” 

_Yeah, we need to buy some time to think, and we can’t do it here._

Dean started to unzip my weapons bag, and Chewy growled again, so Dean looked at me, and I took care of it. “No, Chewy. Those aren’t yours. We’ll get you something when we get where we’re going.” 

Chewy bowed his head again, and Dean rolled his eyes while he grabbed what we needed for the time spell. “When?” 

_August 1, 1958._


	93. Not So Welcome to the Team

“Wait!”

“Did you hear that?”

Of course he heard it. Pretty hard not to hear it when it’s the only sound around here . . . other than all the noise they were making. “Beth, we don’t have –“

“But it’s you. We can’t leave –“

He started saying the time spell, and Beth lightly kicked him in the knee to try and get his attention. “We can’t bring him, Beth . . . If –“

“Over here!” He tapped her in the back of the calf to get her attention. 

“Beth, we need to go. We can’t –“

“I see him. Start . . . now.” She told the figure running out of the fog to keep running, and Dean sighed in frustration before saying the time spell . . . probably faster than he should have considering he'd never done it, or at least not that he could remember. He didn’t want this guy with them. Didn’t matter. The guy just got to them in time. What's the first thing that guy did when the fog and night sky were replaced with a bright sunny afternoon . . . start getting aggressive . . . It’s not like they saved his ass or anything. Gotta question everything. 

When the other guy started freaking out about Chewy, Dean stood up behind their new guest. The last thing they needed was for this guy to figure out who Beth was carrying . . . probably attack her. “Just wait until you find out what year it is.” The new guy turned, and Dean clocked him . . . hard. Mark of Cain was good for some things. Should be out for a while.

“Is that Dean’s brother?” Dean looked at the kid him, and held his breath a couple of seconds. Forgot he was there. Wasn't sure how to be around him. Mostly, he treated him like any other kid. Dean looked to Beth for help in answering at that one. 

“Uh, yeah . . . We played a trick on Dean’s brother, and he started getting scared, so to keep him from hitting us, Dean hit him to calm him down . . . a lot . . . See, how calm he looks? He’s so calm, he fell asleep.”

 _So calm he fell asleep?_ Dean couldn’t help it. He laughed. Any anger he’d felt at Beth bringing this guy along just evaporated, almost as fast as any fear he’d felt disappeared when he'd hugged her wherever they’d just been. The kid Dean gave him a big grin and reached his arms out for him, like he wanted Dean to take him, so Dean did, and the kid Dean whispered, “I thought I was having a nightmare . . . Were you playing a trick on me too?”

“Uh, no . . . We’re all moving . . . Your Mom and Dad went to find the right house, and me and Beth are gonna take you there . . . You’ll have new friends and people to help you take care of Sammy.” 

“Will Mom and Dad be there?”

 _I hope so, kid._

“We don’t know.” Dean gave Beth a look, and she shrugged. _”If they aren’t, and he spends all this time expecting to see them again . . . We can’t do that to him.”_

She looked at the kid Dean and silently asked adult Dean’s permission to say something to him, but Dean had this, or he thought he did. “See, they might be playing hide and seek . . . We may not see them for a while, but . . . you have fun with me and Beth, right?”

Kid Dean slowly nodded before he looked over Dean’s shoulder and asked, “What’s that?”

Turning to look, Dean laughed before he glanced at the guy on the ground. The 4 year old him handled Chewy better than he had. “That’s Chewy . . . He’s missing his Mom and Dad, so me and Beth adopted him to keep him out of trouble.”

“Like me and Sam?”

“Uh, we’re babysitting you guys . . . and might be for a long time, but, uh . . . not forever. When your parents come back, then you can go back to them. Chewy’s parents won’t be coming back.”

The kid Dean looked over his shoulder at Chewy again and asked, “What’s the matter with him?”

“Uh, he’s a . . . well, he’s a monster, but he’s a baby monster, and he scares the bad monsters away.” Might be how Beth helped sell him on bringing it with them to their camp. If he wasn’t sure about having Gadreel hang around if Gadreel could kill her some day the way a Gadreel had killed the good Rachel they found, and if something had happened to her Dad . . . then, maybe an ogre would be a good guard for the camp. He still had no idea what they were going to feed it, but that’s what he was going with for now, and he was definitely going to be keeping an on it.

Kid Dean whispered, “Sammy’s sick.”

Dean glanced at Beth making Sam laugh and said, “Nah, if he was sick, he wouldn’t be laughing, would he?” 

Kid Dean looked over his shoulder to watch Sam and then relaxed. “I’m sick too.”

“You feel better now though, right?”

The kid Dean looked at him and reluctantly nodded before pointing at Dean’s neck. “You’re sick . . . Chewy is sick.”

“Yeah, Beth and me will take care of it, okay?” 

Kid Dean nodded before he pointed down at the knocked out Dean and said, “Your brother isn’t sick.”

See, even the 4-year old him knew there was something wrong with that.

As soon as they’d gotten out of the dark and into the light, Dean had begun to feel the decay he’d felt inside him recede. He hadn’t known exactly where she was, but God’s sister had been really fucking close. He’d be willing to wager everything he owned that God’s sister was what had been making them sick. 

And Cas . . . whatever that black stuff in his veins had been . . . Cas’d had it to . . . When Dean first saw Cas in the fog, he’d thought something was off about him, so he’d tried talking to him, but . . . he’d had to kill Cas. Even if it wasn’t his Cas, he was having a hard time dealing with that. And all that black shit Cas had spewed everywhere had gotten on him, and after Cas was dead, Dean had noticed the veins in his hands were starting to go dark, like Cas’s. He hadn’t known if it was from Cas getting sick all over him or something else. 

Glancing over his shoulder at Beth, Dean decided he didn’t know if that had been the Cas from this universe or Beth’s Cas either. If it had been her Cas, then Cas wouldn’t have been sent here alone, which meant that whoever came with Cas was probably dead or a zombie the way Cas had been, unless whoever came with Cas was Gabriel, but Gabriel wouldn’t have let something like that happen to his brother, so whoever it was might’ve been one of the humans on their team, or Gabriel was dead, and Beth didn’t need to know that, not when it couldn’t be confirmed. Maybe that had been the Cas from this universe, and he’d taken his trench coat off for some reason, like going crazy because of that black shit. 

That left Beth and the knocked out Dean as the two anomalies. Beth . . . maybe she was right. Maybe now that he had the Mark, they’d switched roles, and she healed him and he took on things that tried to attack her, like whatever the – God’s sister in the future was doing in those woods . . . That was a possibility, and it was a possibility Dean was okay with not examining too much for now, but the guy knocked on the ground? Why wasn't he sick? 

Maybe it was because KO-Dean used to have the Mark and didn’t anymore. That'd make him connected to God’s sister the way Beth had said Dean would be if his Mark came off . . . That meant this guy was not one of the original Deans on their team, like the Boy Scout or the solo-Dean. Maybe that’s who’d been sent with Beth’s Cas here, or maybe the Cas Dean had just killed was this Dean’s Cas from this universe . . . Dean was really hoping it was the second one. He didn’t want Beth to think her entire family was dead, possibly including Rogue . . . No, it had to be this Dean’s Cas, and he was gonna make sure he told this guy to say that whether it was true or not when the guy woke up . . . So, if the Cas Dean had just killed was KO-Dean's Cas . . . What’d that mean? . . . God’s sister could probably infect angels too, and this guy wouldn’t have gone anywhere without his brother and Cas. Maybe this guy had lost his brother to the sickness, and Cas had held on a little longer because he was an angel, which left the KO-Dean on the ground the last man standing . . . possibly on the planet in the future they’d just left. 

Dean got why Beth wouldn’t have wanted to leave the KO-Dean there alone, and he already knew that if guy on the ground was truly alone now, she’d want to bring him with them on the rest of the mission, but God’s sister had to be able to find the KO-Dean anywhere he went because their connection. And if God's sister found them again and saw two Deans, one with the Mark and one without, she’d know there were other universes, so they’d have to stay on the move a lot more, not just in this universe to stay out in front of her, but maybe in others, so she wouldn’t figure out what Chuck had done. That could endanger the entire mission. Should’ve left this guy behind.


	94. A 2-Minute Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is a big giant block of text. It's supposed to be.

_Chuck, I’m . . . well, I don’t know what I am. I’m a little lost. I mean, I know what I have to do, or I have an idea of what I should do . . . I don’t know if it’ll work. I mean, I guess we’ll know if it has if we go somewhere else, but . . . How are you anyway? Things didn’t look great when I got here. How much time do you have left? This whole universe will collapse without you, right? Just like ours would have . . . Think I’m having a hard time with the whole, you’re everywhere at once thing . . . Does it mean that if you die in the future, you’re still alive in the past? I don’t think so. I think we’ll just be wiped out . . . If nothing else, that’s what she’ll start working on next, right? Going back in time to destroy everything you’ve made finish to start . . . Are any of your duplicates going to take us somewhere else if that happens, or is this the last stop if my plan doesn’t work? If it’s the last stop, maybe I will go to the future if we don’t jump somewhere else, but I’m thinking that’d be a bad idea. What if she’s chomping up the scenery, and we run into her? She might start thinking about going to other universes if she doesn’t know this is the only one . . . Guess we can’t stay here forever . . . have to figure something out . . . Mostly, Chuck, I think . . . well, I think I am surrounded by people and feel totally alone . . . I don’t know why. I just do. You’re probably dying somewhere, but I don’t think I have anyone else to talk to right now . . . I mean I do, but usually, I talk to my Dad this way, and I don’t know where he is . . . guess, I didn’t know where he was for a long time . . . thought he wasn’t real, you know the drill, but . . . I miss him. I miss my camp. I miss my daughter. I miss my Cas. I miss my life . . . maybe I even miss Sam . . . at least I could count on him to . . . I don’t know . . . be annoying and evil and bossy . . . challenging. It’s not that this isn’t challenging, but I think I’m losing it a little . . . I think we’re running out of time. I think I don’t understand why we would have ended up where we did if you didn’t want us to see that . . . and the weird thing is that we’re running out of time, but it’s in the future compared to our camp . . . and yet that still effects our camp . . . I want to go home . . . I mean I want to finish this, but how long are we going to be doing this? Did you just take my daughter and my Dean, so they could be replaced with a kid Dean and baby Sam and a new Dean who’s like my old Dean more and more each day in some ways and not so much in others. Is my daughter even going to be a kid anymore when we’re done? Is she going to be like 5 and not remember me anymore? Am I going to miss more of these early years with her than I already have? I shouldn’t have brought her. I mean, I guess I had a reason. I wanted her with me, and yet here she’s not, and I guess I thought maybe she’d be a good way to get through to various Deans, who would in turn get through to various Sams . . . but now? Now, I think I should have left her at the camp . . . she would’ve just thought we were gone and back in the blink of an eye, like the other kids when we’re done, but now I don’t even know how old she is anymore. I mean, she has to be aging, right? What about Lily? She and Rogue are supposed to be best friends, but what happens if she goes back, and she’s too old to play with Lily anymore? If she goes back, and you put her back to the same age she was when she left, does that mean she’ll lose all that development she’s gained since we left? Or does it mean we’ll have a second chance to right the wrongs that have been made since we’ve been doing this . . . things, like her OCD. I don’t think she really started doing that until we started this. I think with more Deans showing up, she wanted to protect her core family in her own different way . . . What am I supposed to do when her Dad doesn’t come home? I mean this Dean is really similar and part of him is her Dad, but he doesn’t look quite the same, and she can pick up on things like that. What’s that going to do to her? I was okay –ish in the last universe, or I think I was . . . I just kept trying to . . . that’s it. I just kept trying, and now I think its all starting to hit home for some reason . . . I miss my best friend . . . the guy who could cheer me up after what happened at the wendigo farm by doing something simple, like leaving me one of his shirts to wear or saying the right thing. I miss our nights out . . . not just the ones from before the Apocalypse, but I think I miss the ones that we had after that more, just the two of us in the hunter’s shack, listening to records, drinking, playing games, and picking one another up after a bad day. I miss having someone who could carry me when I wasn’t strong enough to get back up on my own . . . I miss feeling like I could let him do that, because he knew how often I fell and needed his help . . . He knew how weak I was, and it didn’t matter . . . I miss everything and nothing, because he’s right here . . . kind of. I know its in this Dean to be the same, because he is the same, but . . why should he have to be? Why can’t he just be himself? And wasn’t my Dean important at all? I like this Dean, it’s not that I don’t . . . I mean I really do . . . it’s just I don’t think I’m allowed to mourn mine . . . It’d make this one feel bad, and he tries even harder than I do, and that’s what I like about him, but it makes me feel guilty sometimes, because . . . I guess I do hold back, but it’s not necessarily because I don’t want this one or to work at something that could be really good. It’s just . . . if I didn’t hold back a little, I . . . well, I guess I’d have to let go, and I can’t . . . I can’t let go of that anymore than I can the thought that I’ll find my daughter again and my Dad and Cas and that I’ll make it back to my kids at the camp before I’m 100 . . . guess I’m already over a 100 . . . in soul years anyway . . . I have no idea how old I am . . . anyway, just thought I’d say, ‘hi.’ My name is Beth Foley . . . I’m in your universe now, and you can hear me for the reason you think you can. I’m here to help . . . hopefully, I don’t do the opposite._

I stubbed my cigarette out and threw it in a bucket next to the cabin we’d found about 5 miles from where we’d been. We really needed to get out of here. It was still too close to where we’d been, even if it was like 50 years in the past. Heading back inside, I looked at the poor Dean passed out on the couch and asked, “Is he still knocked out, or is he pretending?” We had to get going on stealing a car. Next stop Normal, Illinois.


	95. A Little Dead Inside

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is from the newest Dean's perspective (the one who was knocked out in the woods).

“What are we doing here, Beth?” 

Dean watched a guy who looked just like him trying to get the attention of the chick in the passenger seat. She had her iPod on and didn’t hear or was pretending not to hear until the guy driving touched her arm. Dean looked down at the kid him, who was sleeping up against him and his baby brother. There was a trailer they’d stolen with an ogre in the back too. Thinking about that almost made him want to smile. 

He guessed that maybe he should be surprised by this whole thing, but he really wasn’t. He’d seen enough to know what two Gods at war with one another were capable of doing . . . plus, this wasn’t the first time he’d heard a message similar to the one that these two had given him about multiple universes. The last ones who gave it to him didn’t make it . . . kinda hoped these did, not just because of the kids, but maybe because these two had already done something unexpected, and maybe that meant they had a chance. It was easier to get attached if he thought they had a chance, and right now he needed to have something to attach himself to because he was drifting.

That’s when he started listening to what the woman in the front said, and he decided to get involved in the conversation. “Wait, you’re going after Abaddon?”

She glanced back at him and said, “Yeah . . . but the timing has to be right. We have to kill her after your grandfather goes through the portal and before she goes through after him.” 

Gently readjusting the kids, so he could sit forward, Dean asked, “Why?”

“Uh, well . . . if we don’t, then your Dad would’ve been raised as a legacy, and I have no idea what that’d do to this universe. The angels set your Mom and Dad up, so that would probably still happen, but I don’t know . . . the Men of Letters -”

Dean got an idea. “What's so wrong with changing all of that? I mean, maybe if the chapter house hadn't been wiped out, Sam and me would’ve had back up . . . I know we still would’ve been born. All the crap stuff with Azazel still would’ve happened, and so would the stuff with the seals and the Apocalypse, but we would’ve had help with the Apocalypse from the other Men of Letters . . . the Leviathan still would’ve gotten out . . . I think . . . I still would’ve gone to Purgatory, but I would’ve gotten out, and –“

“How?”

“What?”

The woman looked back at him and asked, “How? You wouldn’t have been trained to fight? How would you have survived Purgatory if you didn’t know how to do that?”

He didn’t know. “Maybe I would’ve known a spell or something to get me out of there . . . We wouldn’t have gotten mixed up with the tablets, and Sam –“

“You don’t think the Men of Letters would have wanted something like that?”

He didn’t know. “Maybe, but I bet Sam would be a lawyer, who came to the bunker for annual meetings instead of doing the trials himself . . . They wouldn’t have almost killed him, Gadreel wouldn’t have happened, and Abaddon won’t be a problem if we kill her now in 1958 . . . no hunting. No Mark. No D-“

“Maybe don’t say her name.” Dean looked at the guy who looked like him and nodded. If that might attract God's sister, he probably shouldn’t. He glanced at the woman to see what she thought, and she . . . well, mostly she just looked sad.

“Can I think about it?” He sat back and nodded instead of saying something shitty, like it was his universe and his life, so it was his choice. She looked like she’d been through a lot or maybe it felt like she had. He’d wait until they stopped somewhere to talk about it with her. Bet she had a lot to say.

They ended up in a B&B. Maybe that’s all they had in the 50s. Dean didn’t know. Place wasn’t bad anyway. There was a knock on his door maybe half an hour after they’d checked-in. An interruption worked for him, because he had nothing to do other than lay on the bed and stare at the ceiling. Sam was dead. Cas was dead. God’s sister was after him, and he felt empty, like maybe he wanted her to fill the void, but if he had a chance to not have that happen, he had to take it, because he didn’t want that either. 

The woman was standing there when he opened the door. He wasn’t ready to get attached enough to say or even think their names, but he was glad to see her. The other him really didn’t want him here at all. If they went along with Dean’s plan, then they wouldn’t have to worry about him being with them for long.

“Can we talk?”

Yeah, that’s why he’d opened the door. He opened it further, and she walked into his room. She didn’t look the way she felt. She looked fine, but she didn’t feel that way. “You have a chance to think about what I said?”

“Uh, yeah . . . Couple of things . . . One, if you’re a part of killing Abaddon, it could create some kind of a time loop, where everything that’s happened right up to when you met us in the woods has to happen again, so you can come back in time to stop it from happening, which means you can’t be a part of it, or nothing will ever get resolved. We'll just be in an endless loop . . . make sense?” 

She sat on the edge of his bed and looked up at him, and yeah, that made sense in a way that everything made sense and didn’t at the same time all the time now, so he nodded. Was he happy that he was being benched on the Abaddon thing? Not really. The part of him that fought, that’d always fought, was still in there, or he wouldn’t have gone looking for this woman when he heard her in his head and then after he heard her yelling for him . . . hadn’t known she’d been looking for two other Deans, but it didn’t really matter. He’d still felt like he had to do something to keep from packing it all in. 

“What’s the other thing?

“Let’s say we go with your idea, and all those things you said still happen, what’s to say your Dad still wouldn’t –“

“He wouldn’t have needed to drag me and Sam all over the country trying to find answers on what killed Mom and then how to kill it . . . He’d know how to find any answers he didn't have already, and he'd probably know how to keep Sam safe using whatever he read at the bunker. He probably could’ve bought his way out of Vietnam or had the right kind of connections . . . or something like that, so hunting wouldn’t have been his first instinct.”

He’d had time while he was lying here doing nothing to flesh it out some more. She smiled briefly and said, “Good points . . . but how do you know that you still wouldn’t have become a hunter? You’ve always been something of a rebel . . . Do you really think you would’ve been content to stay at the bunker researching all the time and following their rules to the letter of the law? I mean that’s what the Men of Letters did. Sure, they learned some pretty cool spells, but most of what they did was record things that happen in the supernatural world . . . Do you really think if you were sent out on a mission, were told to just write up a report at the end and not get involved, that you could’ve done that, or would you have wanted to step in and help? I mean, I know your grandfather did at least once, but that was like a big . . . well, it’s not something he was supposed to do.”

“I’ll still disappear.”

“What?”

Dean glanced at her and said, “That’s what you don’t want, right? You don’t want the guy you're talking to right now to disappear, but if you do things your way . . . kill Abaddon, let Henry through, and the rest of my life stays the same, then I’ll probably go back to . . . I don’t know. Sitting at that bar when Crowley came up to me for help on finding the First Blade, except he won’t come this time, because he won't have a problem with Abaddon. The me you see now would still disappear. I'd just go back to being that guy and wouldn't remember what’s happened in the last 2 ½ years . . . All I'd have is a pissed off Sam who doesn’t want to be brothers anymore . . . that’s it.”

“Is that really worse than having a Sam who's too embarrassed to claim you as his brother because he's the star Men of Letter’s student, and you're out there saving people when that’s against the rules? I’m picturing that your life will turn out to be something that’s not a million miles away from what that djinn made you see the time –“

Dean sat next to her and said, “before I sold my soul?” She nodded, so he said, “Better that than –“

“At least now you have your memories of growing with up him. What will you have if you erase all that?”

Nothing. Maybe she was right. He didn't want that. “What if I . . . What if I go back to that night at the bar, and you guys pick me up? I’d be as ready to go with you as I am now, but he’d still be alive.”

“I’d almost think this was a time loop, because we already have a Dean from that point in time, except I know Abaddon was in his universe, and she won’t be in this one . . . What if -"

"What's the deal with you and time loops?"

She shrugged and said, "I don't want to get stuck in one, or I'll never get home, and I've been trying to remember all the things Chuck said when we started this. I don't think he told us about time loops because he wanted us to make any. I'm thinking it was a warning . . . Anyway, if you remember everything that’s happened when you get to that bar, so you know not to get the Mark of Cain for any reason, you could stay. You'd still have a chance to get things back on track with Sam.”

“The only reason Sam and I got back to being okay again is because I died." 

"Would've worked itself out eventually without you dying . . . given enough time. You might not feel the way you do now if Sam is still alive, and you have time to fix things.

"I won’t change my mind. If you kill Abaddon, we’ll go with you guys coming to get me in that bar and me remembering the last 2 1/2 years, so I know why I can't stay . . . you sure you can swing that?”

“Yeah, I’m thinking the second his sister getting out is erased, Chuck will be able to answer my request.”

“You sure you want me on your team?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Dean shrugged before he looked at the door. “Think the other me is –“

“The other you thinks your connection to Amara will help her track us down . . . I think maybe that’s not a bad thing if we need it somewhere down the road.”

“You mean like bait? Cause that didn’t work –“

“It’ll work when it’s supposed to work. And I’ll take my chances. I’m not leaving you here alone . . . I don’t leave people behind who need my help.”

“Or ogres.” She smiled, and he said, “Seriously, what were you thinking? I’ve never even seen one of those before but I can tell it’s gonna get a whole lot bigger . . . what the hell are you supposed to feed it when you get home?”

She shrugged and said, “I don’t know . . . monsters are even closer to humans than pigs are . . . might be helpful in clearing some of those out. We’re going to try and make our universe a mostly monster-free zone by the time we’re done with it."

"Mostly?"

"Well, I guess it depends on your definition of monster. I don't consider Chewy one even though he looks the part. Then there's Abbey. She's a monster, but she's not really a monster . . . I'm thinking our universe is something of a safe haven for monsters that are one of a kind, like Lily, Chewy and Abbey . . . Just have to make sure it all works out when I get back."

“How do you do that?”

“What?”

“Fake it so well?”

She smiled again and said, “Helps if you mean what you say, and I do . . . I’ll find a way to make it happen, even if it’s not right this second. Until then, I just keep putting one foot in front of the other . . . It’s all I can do.”


	96. Mindful Conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 2 Deans talking in this after the break are the MoC Dean and Beth's Dean (from the original parts of the series), and they're in MoC Dean's subconscious after he got tranquilized.

Beth handed Chewy a stuffed bunny, and the ogre did what Dean could only describe as some kind of an ogre happy dance. It was weird, and made him laugh in spite of himself. He was trying to get into the right mindset. They’d been waiting for the 12th to roll around, so they could go take care of this Abaddon thing and tonight was the night. There was just one problem. “Hey, Beth, uh, you know where my First Blade is?” 

She glanced over at him and said, “It didn’t come through with you?”

Yeah, it had, but somewhere between when he landed and now, he’d lost it. “I know you have it. I’m gonna need it back.”

She took Baby Sam from Dean and handed him off to his babysitter for the night, the new Dean they shouldn’t have brought with them. “For Abaddon?”

“Yeah.”

“We don’t need it.”

“Yeah, we do. How the hell else are we supposed to kill her?” The kid Dean asked her something, and Beth dealt with that before turning to look at Dean again. By then he was getting annoyed. She’d been distracted all week. “Just because I let you hold onto it for me, doesn’t mean it's yours.”

“Uh huh, and it’s yours because –“

“Other than what I’m wearing, it’s the only thing that keeps going through with me when we go to a different universe. It’s mine.”

Beth looked at her weapons bag and said, “I don’t know. I gave you one of my machetes, some knives, and an M9. They keep going through with me, but they’re yours.” Yeah, but that didn’t mean the First Blade was hers just because it kept going through with him, and he kept giving it to her to hold . . . He hadn’t even done that this time. She’d flat out stolen it, and he hadn’t cared about it when he didn’t need it, but he did now. 

“I need it if I we’re going after Abaddon. The whole reason I’m on this mission is to take care of problems like her.”

“No, you’re not. You’re on this mission because you signed up to do it . . . We don’t need you to sacrifice who you are or –“

“We don’t need you to sacrifice yourself at all, but you do it all the time anyway.”

She glanced at him and said, “No, I don’t, or I’d be dead.”

“I can handle it . . . Your killing exorcism won’t work on her.” 

Beth bit her bottom lip before she said, “Because it didn’t work on you?” 

“Well, yeah.” 

“But you were a special demon. She isn’t. She’s just a Knight of Hell. It’s not like she’s tied to her body. She can smoke out. You couldn’t, and you couldn't die. It’s not –“

“Where’s the damn Blade, B-“ 

Dean slapped the back of his neck, when it felt like he’d been stung by the world’s biggest bee, and felt the dart. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the newest Dean holding Beth’s tranq gun. Dean felt to his knees, and that Dean shrugged. “Didn’t think I was gonna let you cold clocking me go, did you?” 

\---------------------

“Hello, Dean.”

Turning, Dean found himself back in the woods. He was like 90% sure he’d gotten out of here. He wasn’t sure who said that either. He didn’t see anyone. It was night, and there was too much fog. “Beth?”

“Who is Beth?”

Dean turned to look the way he’d just been facing and came face to face with some woman . . . one he didn’t know and did. “Amara?”

She looked at his chest and said, “My brother wants to negotiate?”

 _Negotiate what?_ “Am I really here, or is this –“

“Who is Beth, Dean?”

“None of your damn business, that’s who. And you're in a fucking dream, Winchester, get it together.” Dean looked to his left and saw another Dean standing there. Looked like Beth’s Dean decided to get involved. 

Amara turned her attention onto the other Dean. “You’re unexpected.” She looked between the Deans and then back at the other Dean before saying, “You’re imprisoned by him.” 

“Not really imprisoned . . . more like tagging in when he lets me . . . He’s a shitty partner.”

That was crap. If he had control over it, there were a lot of times when he would've let that Dean have control. “I don’t have any control over –“

“You don’t? You did it when we were a demon. Thanks for that by the way, dick. Spent my whole life trying not to be one of those things, and then you went got me turned into one in like 2 seconds.”

“When we were a demon, it was all me. You –“

“Was it? You sure, you didn’t let me take the brunt of Sam’s bullshit? And most of the cure right up until I shot the rest of them with tranq darts, and then you took back over . . . And the one time, you should’ve let me take over since then, you couldn’t let yourself do it. Just had to -”

“You think I wanted to stab –“

“I mean after that . . . on the way to the hospital. If you fuck up, you’d better know how to fix it, and you don’t . . . yet, and you won’t as long as you never fucking listen to me.”

Amara stepped in front of Dean and said, “Is this Beth the reason my brother bound his strength by wrapping him up in you?”

Uhhh . . . “I don’t know what makes you think –“

She reached for his arm, and Dean went to pull it back, but found he couldn’t move. Lifting his sleeve, Amara said, “I am the Mark, and you wear it now . . . We are together already in a way. Without the Mark, he could resist, but now my brother thinks that by forcing my Dean and you to be with me, that will be enough to make things right.”

“Uh, I’m not –“

She grabbed a hold of his head, and brought her lips to his, and a couple of things happened. One, was, he couldn’t move, and he wasn’t necessarily a fan of that. Two, was that the second it felt like this might be something he wanted, a part of him got about 10 shades of pissed off and pushed him back from her. 

Well, that was awkward. He wasn’t entirely sure what to do. She was God’s sister after all, and he’d just given her a pretty insulting brush off. She looked confused and intrigued and maybe like she was going to –

“I'm not your fucking Dean . . . And I am sick and tired of you dicks using us however you want . . . I’ll give Chuck one thing, he might might be a lot of things, but at least he doesn’t force Beth into doing shit with him she don’t wanna do . . . Think you made it a whole lot easier for me to say, I’m on his side . . . I won’t let you take me from her. I will find a way to end you if you don’t back the fuck off right now.“

Uhh, that'd come from him, but he hadn't said it . . . well, he'd said it, but he'd had no control over saying it. He wasn't quite sure what to do. Amara was standing there, and he had no idea what that look meant, but he guessed he didn't have to find out, because she disappeared. So did the fog. Dean looked down at his chest and said, “Dude, the next time you decide to take over and do something like that, you wanna give me a heads up first?” 

He waited for Beth’s Dean’s response and then a few seconds later, Beth’s Dean was standing next to him again. “God's sister put us back together, and I guess now you know what it feels like when somebody else is making you say and do shit you wouldn't normally say and do. Besides, you were just standing there. Should’ve put up a better fight than that. You’re gonna have to do better on the next one, and you need to lay off of the newest guy who looks like us. The Darkness can track you easier than she can track him.”

Dean looked down at his arm and said, “How’d you know that's how she found –“

“I’m here aren’t I? Just saw her the same as you did . . . She shouldn't have been here. I don’t like her pissing all over my domain.” 

Dean looked around the woods and asked, “So, you just kicked her out?”

“No . . . kept you from telling her where Beth is, so Beth could do her thing.”

Dean slumped and looked at Beth’s Dean. “You mean it’s over? Abaddon’s gone?”

“Think so . . . you found a way to get yourself benched . . . You know Beth didn’t take it, right? You put it in her bag when you were still in these woods the first night we got here, and Chewie took it . . . thinks it’s his new chew toy or something.” 

Oh. “Why didn’t Beth just –“

“She doesn’t do well when you yell at her or didn’t you get that when you stabbed her? She says the wrong things, doesn’t say anything, takes off, or laughs.”

“She wants you, you know.”

The other Dean's shoulders dropped a little before he said, “I know . . . But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want . . . look, if you and me can’t figure this out, how the hell is she supposed to figure it out . . . you and me need to stop fighting . . . then she could have us both, but the way things are . . . it’s why you need to back off on being a dick with this other one if he comes with us to the next universe. She needs a friend . . . All you want is the relationship . . . I did both . . . I was actually her best friend a long time before we got together . . . not saying what you’re doing is wrong. I mean, I get why you don’t want to mess her around and make her think you don’t want her the way I did for way too long, and you’re taking time to get things right, but one of the things you need to get right is being her friend first . . . and don’t expect her to be fine with letting me go. I mean what’s it been a couple of months? Could you just let Sam go if –“

“I did let Sam go. I –“

“No, you didn’t. If he came back tomorrow, you’d ditch this whole happy families routine you –“

“She said the same thing. I’m not pretending –“

“No, but you would be if Sam came back. I know there’s a part of you that wants her to ask Chuck to set up a meeting with your Sam, so you can convince him to come with you. If that happened, you’d take off with your brother the second you got a chance . . . You might come back to see Beth the way you did Lisa, but the two main differences between Beth and Lisa are that Beth would let you come and go as much as you want without complaining about it . . . and she can protect herself . . . You can’t let go of Sam the same way she can’t let go of me.”

“So, it’ll never work?”

“I didn’t say that. You want me to say that, because it’s easier if I do, but I didn’t, and I won’t. You and me just need to figure out how to be one person instead of two, and you need to let go of Sam.”

“Why should I let go of Sam if she can’t –“

“Because there's the family you grow up with and the family you make . . . At some point, the family you make has to come first, and she and Rogue are worth it.”

“Why does it have to be one or the other? The guy we met with a Rachel like Beth . . . They got along fine with Sam."

"That Sam grew up with her. He saw her as family. She probably helped take some of the pressure off of that Dean and helped them have less of a dysfunctional relationship.“

“We're not dysfunc -"

"He might say he does, but Sam doesn't want you with anyone else. You're the same way. That sounds dysfunctional to me, and the hilarious part is that it's not all you. It's not even mostly you. That's what he wants you to think. Sam wants you to be all about him, and if you think that's just the way my Sam was, think again . . . Your Sam is probably going evil looking for you. You know for all his bitching about how we hold him back and how needy we are and all that other crap . . . He’s the one with the real problem . . . Sure, he can walk away, but those times are on his terms . . . If we do it, he's throws a fit, and more often than not, he'll sacrifice whoever and whatever he has to sacrifice to get us right back under his thumb again.”

“Yeah? If he’s such a shit brother, then why didn’t you let your Sam go?“

“I did . . . I can tell you the exact moment it happened too . . . I could say it was when the outbreak started, and I left him behind to go find Beth. I could say it was when Jenna lit Tommy’s pyre or even at the Devil’s Gate in Wyoming, and maybe each of those were steps along the way, but I was still holding on a little after all of that. I didn’t let go until I had to make a choice in Vegas, Beth or Sam. We’d just cleared the last camp of kids, and I was looking down at Beth, and . . . I chose Beth. I wanted her to do whatever she had to do to Sam to make it out of there alive. And now? I’m not that upset about him being gone. Got tortured by him one too many times, I guess. I’m more upset that you’re screwing up me getting to spend forever with Beth.”

“Because of the Mark?”

“Yeah, that, and you are me, and I am you, so I want things to work out with you and her, cause I’ll be a part of it too . . . You wanna know something you need to do that’s going to suck, but you have to do anyway?”

“What?”

“You need to tell her what you and the Dean from this universe talked about when he woke up and she was out of the room . . . She needs to know . . . If she hasn’t figured it out already. I might hide some things from her for a while, but I always told her eventually . . . and she never held out on me, or at least not for long. I’d rather have her tell me something bad as soon as she knows than find out she knew and didn’t tell me.”

“But that’s you . . . she lives in denial most of the time, and she needs hope, or she’s never going to get through this.”

“So give her hope, but she has to know what she’s dealing with so she can work through it, and expect her to get a little wild. When things build up the way they’re building up with her now, all it takes is for her be blindsided by something small, and she’ll stop being able to put one foot in front of the other. It’s better if that doesn’t happen, but if it does, no matter what she says, don’t leave it . . . If you do, it’ll take her longer to come out of it . . . and you’ll probably have to talk to her about things you really don’t want to talk about, but do it if it’s what she needs.”

Sighing, Dean asked, “Anything else?”

“Yeah, a lot . . . 18 years worth. You’ve got it easy. All you have to do is learn from my mistakes . . . I actually had to make them first.”


	97. The Backup Plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beth is talking with the Dean they picked up in the woods. The MoC is still passed out from the tranquilizer.

“So, I take it this means that it’s done, right? I mean I didn’t get the Mark, and she didn’t get out?” I nodded, and the Dean in front of me at the bar said, “Just like that?”

“Yeah.”

“Seems too easy.”

“It’s easy when you have the right tools. I knew the killing exorcis-“

“No, I don't mean Abaddon. I mean with Amara. We erased her getting out just like that? It never happened?”

“Well, it did, so we had to go with a more drastic approach and cut the branch back to now, but at least the branch can regrow from here into something better.”

“Why didn’t Chuck just do that himself?”

“I don’t know. Think he put a bunch of cheaters on his team for a reason.”

Dean nodded and looked towards his whiskey on the bar. He'd ordered the whiskey from the bartender a few minutes ago, but in his mind, he'd ordered 2 ½ years ago, because he still remembered everything that happened after this moment of his life. “I don’t want this, and . . . I don’t know how to explain it, but I don’t feel any better now that she’s gone. Still feel like I got the Mark and like all that other stuff happened.”

“I know. That’s because it did . . . in your history, but the history of the universe was changed. You still remember what happened . . . but maybe think of it as a prophetic reason for why you shouldn’t get the Mark.”

I stood up, and he said, “So, where are we going?”

“You’re not going to try and make things right with Sam?”

Dean looked back at the whiskey and shook his head. “Only reason he and I were okay again was because I got the Mark and died . . . if that doesn’t happen now, then things will stay the way they are.”

“But it wasn’t just the Mark and you dying, it was time.” 

“You want me to prove it? I’ll take you to him, so you can see it for yourself, but then I want to know how to sign onto this mission with you guys. You told me I could. That’s the only reason you're still here, so if you want to move onto the next universe, you have to tell me.” Walking outside, I could see a car with a U-haul trailer attached to the back. I was guessing that was our lift out of here . . . looking through the windows . . . yeah, the Dean with the Mark of Cain was passed out against the door. I assume that meant the kids were in the back too. I’d asked Chuck to bring us all here just before killing Abaddon. The kids couldn't come into the bar, and the Dean with the Mark of Cain didn't look like he was up for going to the bar, so I guess I was the only one who was . . . along with the Dean from this universe. “How much of a problem is he gonna be?”

“Who? Dean? Because you knocked him out? Uhh . . . well, he wasn’t giving me looks like he was going to hunt me, so –“

“If you wait until that happens, you’ve waited too long.”

Oh, he meant how much of a problem was Dean going to be period. “He won’t be.”

“I don’t want Sam to see him. I don’t want Sam to know where I’m going. He has a shot at a clean break from me, and I want him to take it . . . I mean, we might have to work a case with –“

“We?”

He gave me a sad smile and said, “Yeah, we . . . I want to see how you do without all the bells and whistles, like this killing exorcism you keep talking about or angel sigils that can kill Metatron . . . just a normal hunt.”

“Another audition?”

“The others test you too?”

I held my breath briefly and said, “Yeah, the two who were human did, just not the one who was a demon . . . but then even he did, I guess. He just did it before I woke up the first night I met him.”

“Sounds dirty. Do I even want to know?”

I laughed. “Uh, he went digging around in my head while I was a sleep, and I guess I let him . . . my Dean always said I used to sleep too heavily when he was around, like I knew if he was there, I was safe, and maybe I guess –“

“But he was a demon.”

“Yeah, that’s probably the only reason I woke up. He didn’t hurt me.”

“Ever?”

“Uh, well, he did throw a knife at my back once to give us a cover story, but my Dad healed –“

“Your Dad being Gabriel?”

“Having second thoughts?”

“Not at all. Just want to know what I’m getting into here. So, he threw a knife –“

“He also took a knife for me. Another Dean with the Mark of Cain threw it, and the Dean who was a demon teleported in front of me. When I went to talk to Cain, he showed up and convinced Cain to let him look at my arm . . . I’d gotten shot for buying cigarettes before I went there, and then –“

“Why didn’t you have your Dad heal it?”

“I don’t know. I think I was in shock . . . physically and mentally . . . I mean, I really wasn’t expecting it. Anyway, Dean got me out of Cain’s graveyard, and –“

“Wait, so you went to Cain’s graveyard . . . you mean the place Cas went in Illinois?”

“Yeah, I just asked Chuck to take me to him, and he dropped me about 4 inches behind him.”

Dean laughed and said, “You think maybe he was trying to tell you that was a bad idea?”

“No. Mostly, I thought he was playing a joke on me.”

“And Cain didn’t try to kill you?”

“Why would he? I wasn’t on his list, and I told him I could help him see Colette again . . . and –“

“His wife? And you didn’t think that was a bad idea?”

“No . . . and I didn’t think, or well, I hoped he wouldn’t hurt me, because technically, he used to be one of Michael’s vessels, and they’re supposed to want to protect me.”

Dean snorted in disbelief and said, “Okay, so what happened when the demon me did the smart thing and got you out of there?”

“He took me to our motel, had my Dad heal me, and went out to steal me cartons of cigarettes and a pizza, so I wouldn’t get shot by anyone else.”

Dean took all of that in and then said, “And now that he’s not a demon?”

“Uh, there was –“

“A reason you’re supposed to tranq him when he looks like he’s going to hunt you?” I nodded, and Dean shook his head.

\----------------------

“I don’t want her hunting without –“

“She’ll be with me. She’ll be fine. Just want her to see what I’m talking about with Sam.”

It was weird watching them argue, like some kind of an invisible ping-pong tournament played between identical twins. The Dean with a Mark looked from the other Dean to me and said, “And you’re all right with this? He’s using you as a prop, so Sam will think he’s fine without him now that he’s got you.”

Oh. “Well, that’ll backfire. Sam will see that and want back in.” 

One Dean seemed confused by that, and the other involuntarily smiled before muttering, “Heard something similar about Sam somewhere else lately.” Then it looked like he got an idea. “Yeah, okay . . . let’s see what Sam does. You go with him to check out Garth.” Looking at the other Dean, he added, “And, uh, if you weren't lying about wanting to know how she does on a hunt without all the extras . . . She’s never come without them. Even when she didn’t know how to hunt, she knew about the future . . . and on this case, you do too. I wanna see what happens when you go in already knowing which werewolves to off. If you think you’ll get to them before she does . . . might make things interesting for her. Think that’s what she needs right now.” 

\-----------------------  
“Wait, you can’t do anything yet . . . If we do, then Garth, the Reverend, and Bess won’t see the others for what they are . . . need to get the timing right.”

Dean glanced at me and rolled his eyes. “And Sam, right? You don't want him to think I’m a monster for killing the monsters before he can see they are.”

I shrugged. “Well yeah, but it’s more about leaving them in a better place than we found them . . . if we’re leaving.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll do it for Garth, but I’m not doing it for Sam. If he sees me as a monster, it’ll be better for him.” 

“Maybe . . . if you’re serious about leaving with –“

My new phone rang. It was my Dean, so I answered it. "Hey, what do you need?'

“What’s taking so long? Thought you were going there to finish the pack off, not join in on choir practice.” 

I guess it was my turn to roll my eyes. “We have to play this right.”

Silence, and then, “Well, leave the phone on in your pocket, so I can hear.” 

I remembered a time I asked my Dean to do that . . . If I’d stepped in then, would Sam have made his deal? Who knows? Crowley might’ve taken me then and there, but Dean could’ve found me the same way he did . . . just without the croats. That was in the past, and you couldn’t change the past like that . . . well, you could, because we'd just done it. We also did it when Dean and I moved Abaddon’s head . . . That was changing the past, not what we did in 1983. We'd been put in 1983, before anything concrete had been written, so by changing it then, we changed the future . . . I guess that made sense if you wanted to look at that way . . . but going back in time to change something that'd already happened in our own lives wasn't something we could do . . . If we changed the past in our universe, Rogue wouldn’t be born, the supernatural computer wouldn’t have been updated, and we wouldn’t have the means to make our universe a monster-free universe. 

We’d also still have to deal with Raphael and Michael and Crowley, and we wouldn’t have done the training in that other timeline and saved Bela, Andy, Jake, or Lily. We wouldn’t have kept John from selling his soul in that universe or helped Paige become a hunter . . . and we wouldn’t have gone through the training to do this mission or maybe even been offered the chance to do this mission, and everything we’d done to stop God’s sister from being let out of her cage wouldn’t have happened . . . If none of those things happened, if we changed our universe from being destroyed and all the rest, then hundreds of quadrillions of people and souls would be lost in all the universes. Even the universes we hadn't been to on this mission would be destroyed, because even though Amara was never going to get out in those universes, if she did in one of the universes we'd been to already, she could go to those unsuspecting universes and wipe them out if she realized she could. 

Chuck's strategy had been overly complicated and simple at the same time. It'd started long before I had that meeting with him in Heaven. He put all 10 prophecies and tablets in my universe, and that's how Raphael knew to take me. Chuck also probably saw to it that I found every piece of information on the tablets and everything else of importance I found in Heaven too, so it would all lead to me having that meeting with him. When I told him my plan to protect him if anyone found out about the tablets and what I knew, he’d called a second Chuck in when I made my suggestion . . . And I guess that makes sense, if he could see me coming from a mile off.

There may have been a second Chuck in that meeting, but Dean had been wrong about one thing. As far as I knew, there were only two Chucks. Chuck had split off a bunch of different Amaras, all equally as powerful as the other, but there was only one of him, because he'd been the one to make all those universes . . . until he made a duplicate Chuck, a very real duplicate that was equal in power to him . . . How he did it, I don't know, but he did . . . And if that was true, it meant that when we got here, the Chuck in this universe wasn't really dying. I'd had time to think about it, since we'd been here, and I think it was one of his decoys, exactly like the ones my Dad had, because the real Chuck was safe either teaching a bunch of 2nd graders English or in a cage in our universe.

It was very clever, because even to his own sister, they would look like the real thing. Her eyes would've been on the decoy dying, and Chuck taking the life out of the sun for a few weeks or however long . . . at least long enough for her to believe he was really dying, so she wouldn't be inclined to go looking for him somewhere else before we found a way to put her back in the cage. If we'd failed, then given enough time, she would've figured it out when she kept right on existing without him after the sun went out, because reality, including hers, was supposed to cease to exist if her brother really died. Maybe that's why we showed up here when we did. Chuck had been making a point by letting us see we couldn't waste time like we had in the last universe, because we didn't have that kind of time even though it'd seemed like it when you're 30 odd years away from it happening.

So, if Chuck had all these decoys, why was I sure the second Chuck in our meeting had been an equal to Chuck? Because he had to be for Chuck's back up plan to work. What was the back up plan? Well, Dad had messed it up some . . . for a while. Whichever Chuck I'd been locking away from the time I went to God in Heaven to ask for help in getting to Earth . . . that Chuck and the Chuck we'd gotten to know at the camps switched places when I died. I think the Chuck we'd gotten to know had stayed past when he should have . . . a lot longer, like years longer . . . He was supposed to switch places not long after I smashed the tablet in Vegas, but He decided to wait . . . and I wish I could say it's because He wanted to make sure we were okay before He switched places, but I think He had to wait because of something my Dad did . . . What that was, I hadn't figured out yet, but whatever he did . . . I think Chuck and Death had always intended to do a deal with Dean to bring me back, but I think it was supposed to have been a deal to bring me back if Dean signed up to do this mission . . . and it didn't happen the way it was supposed to happen for some reason . . . Possibly it was my Dad coaching Dean on how to use our connection to heal me. Maybe it was my Dad hiding my memories of Heaven, so we didn't find out about me being wiped out and going nowhere when I died until much later, which meant that Dean had no reason to do the deal if he didn't know that . . . I don't know what it was, but whatever it was, it's the reason the new Chuck, the one who'd originally been locked away years longer than he should've been, had started cracking down on my Dad being over-involved in things once he got out. And it was probably why Chuck didn't save me from dying anymore, and maybe also gave him the idea to have my Dad go on this mission with us, because what Chuck needed to win against Amara and Fate was a bunch of cheaters. 

Anyway, if everything didn't go according to plan, and we ended up with Amara chasing us to our universe where Chuck was hiding out, the Chuck who was locked away would arise when I was dead, so if Amara did start hopping universes, went to ours, and caused problems there . . . depending on what kinds of problems she caused, all I had to do was die, and the Chuck in a cage in our universe would get out, and now I could die without bringing Dean down with me. I think that was intentional. Chuck was getting his pieces in order . . . just in case . . . maybe to counteract my connection to Dean. It was something the Chuck we thought of as ours, the original one in our camps, had possibly encouraged through Joshua and Cas, so if the new Chuck didn't want us to have it, then maybe the two Chucks weren't even on the same page anymore . . . maybe that's why the Chuck that we'd gotten to know had really stayed around so long . . . I didn't know. I wanted to believe the best in one of them . . . Kind of wish the one we had to deal with now had gone back in the cage all things considered. It also made me wonder if not all the Amaras would be on the same page too. I mean obviously they weren’t, or there wouldn’t be a universe where she didn’t wipe everything out. I wondered what that meant for my universe.

If Amara came to our universe from another universe, mortally wounded the Chuck currently at our camp, and then went off to destroy another universe, all I had to do was die and the Chuck in a cage would get out, setting the balance right. What would happen if an Amara came to our universe wanting to destroy it and let the Amara in our universe out? Would we end up with 2 Amaras on 1 Chuck . . . unless I died, and then it’d be 2 on 2, but the second Chuck would blindside the others . . . I didn’t know how it would unfold or if it even would. I just knew I was a back up plan in the event everything went wrong . . . just needed to keep trimming these branches back and tidying up the tree to keep it from coming to that, I think.

“Uh, Beth?”

“Yeah?”

“So, are you gonna leave the phone on?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you when we get out . . . just make sure Sam doesn’t see you.”


	98. Done

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is from the perspective of the Dean from the current universe (the one they found in the woods).

“You notice anything off about her?” Dean waited for the Dean she was with to answer, or he guessed she was supposed to be with that guy. That’s the impression he got, and they slept in the same room, so that’s what he was going with even though they didn’t really act like they were together. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked that guy. He was a little off too. Mostly, he seemed to spend his time chasing after the kids or her or the ogre.

“Uh, what do you mean by off? She’s a little -”

“I don’t mean like she’s a half-angel off . . . I mean, like . . . she’s hiding something or working some kind of a game. When she’s around us, she thinks something totally different than she does when she’s not around us, and half the time she’s praying something to Chuck, it’s like she’s praying something different than what she really thinks. Either she’s losing it, or she’s working some kind of a game and doesn’t want us to know what it is.”

The guy who was supposed to be her guy looked towards the door and said, “What? You think she’s out there doing something other than what she said?”

Dean snorted. “No, I’m pretty sure she went to get books about fire trucks for the kid . . . us. I mean when she isn’t doing stuff like that, she seems . . . distracted, and she’s –“

“How do you know what she thinks when she’s around us isn’t what she thinks when she’s not around us?”

“I don’t know . . . I’ve been working on it over longer distances. Half the stuff she says when she’s around us is different than what she thinks when we’re further away, and she keeps us from knowing what she’s thinking –“

“You shouldn’t be –“

“Getting close to her. I know –“

“You can’t even say her damn name, and you’re trying to read her mind. Think that says –“

“I want to know what I’m signing on for here.”

“No, you don't . . . That hunt with Sam went better than you thought it would, because Beth gave him shit at the end for whatever it is he said to you, and it made him not want you around her, the way she said he wouldn’t, and now you’re holding off on making a choice, so you can stick around and see Sam a little longer. Why are you reading Beth’s mind?”

Dean shrugged. He knew. He just wasn’t going to tell him. Maybe it was because he was trying to fill the void left by Amara, but he could feel what she felt too . . . maybe even she didn’t know how she felt. That’s why all the stuff on the surface, the stuff she was thinking . . . He’d wanted to know what it was, but it wasn’t anything like what she felt. Either how she’d felt, since he met her was how she’d always felt, and he hadn’t known her, so he didn’t know that was her normal, or it was something new. Whatever it was, she was definitely playing some kind of a game, or he thought she was . . . based on what he’d heard about her, that’s what she did . . . Or he hoped that’s what this was. If it wasn’t, she was losing it.

When the other Dean went back to feeding Sammy, Dean said, “So, that’s it? You’re not gonna do anything about it?”

The other Dean slumped and looked back at him. “What do you want me to do? She seems fine . . . maybe a little distracted, but I think she’s having a hard time settling here, and you making us stay longer isn’t helping . . . not saying I don’t want you to come with us, but make a decision . . . and I don’t know. Maybe in the next place, I’ll have a chance to get her to feel calm again, like she was starting to do in the last universe.”

Right. So, that guy noticed something wasn’t right . . . well, if Dean decided to stay here, that was one less thing he had to worry about . . . or was it? The question was did he do what he wanted or do what he needed to do, and which one was which? Did he go where he was needed and give up Sam, so Sam could have a good life, a better life, a life where Sam didn’t die because of him, or did he stay where he wasn’t needed and find another way to ruin Sam’s life? Dean didn’t know. He’d thought he did when the memory of Sam dying was fresh in his memory, but now? One more hunt, and he’d know.

\----------------

“No, Dean, I wouldn’t . . . Same circumstances . . . I wouldn’t. I’m –“

“Oh give me a break, you princess prima donna.”

Noo! That’s what Dean had needed to hear, and now she was going to mess it all up. “Uh, I don’t need you to –“ 

_Too late._ Sam, who hadn’t known she was there, turned to look at her, and her eyes narrowed. “You’re right, Sam . . . You wouldn’t do what Dean did. You’d do worse. You’d destroy worlds to save him and then you’d probably make him feel like it was his fault you had to do it, and . . . everything else you just said is a load of rubbish too. He’s willing to sacrifice as long as he’s not hurt? I’m pretty sure he went to Hell for you . . . sure, you got left behind, but now that Lucifer enlightened you on what torture really is, you can hardly say, Dean wasn’t hurt by that . . . Dean sacrificed his entire childhood for you . . . pretty sure that hurt him . . . and when you went to be the big damn hero and jump in the cage, you sacrificed yourself, but Dean was still alive, and –“

“I did it to save the world! I didn’t –“

“No, you didn’t. You did it to make letting Lucifer out of his cage up to Dean, because you chose to listen to Ruby over Dean and don’t even get me started on what you said about being willing to sacrifice yourself in that church . . . Even then your ‘confession’ showed exactly how jealous you really are of other people being in your brother’s life . . . Benny, Cas . . . oh, how could Dean choose other people to have his back over poor Sammy . . . He talked you out of dying? That’s a load of bollocks. When has he ever been able to talk you out of doing anything you wanted to do? You weren’t ready to die, or you wouldn’t have stopped. And if you had died, then it would’ve been –“

“Sam, she didn’t mean –“ 

Dean got up, because he didn’t like his brother’s posture, or the way Sam had decided to tower over her, but she didn’t stop there. “If you’d died, it would’ve been for the stupidest reason I’ve ever heard. Closing off Hell? How’d that work when it happened with Heaven? You only wanted to do it in the first place to show Dean there was light at the end of the tunnel, and you would’ve followed through on it to make not looking for Dean when he was in Purgatory up to him . . . I mean –“

“You want him?”

“I do.”

“Then you can have him.”

Dean went to walk around her, and she put her hand up to make Dean wait, and then looked over her shoulder. “Was already planning on taking him . . . That’s why we’re here. He wanted to say goodbye, so take a good look, because you won’t see him again. I’m taking him somewhere you’ll never be able to find him.” 

Sam stopped and looked back at Dean to see if that was true. Waiting, until she knew Sam could tell she was serious by the look on Dean’s face, she then added, “And however mad you are, Sam, pay attention to how never seeing Dean again cuts right through all of that. Maybe think about why considering how worked up I just made you. Then maybe you’ll know which you want more, a brother or to hold onto your anger.” Looking at Dean she said, “You have a decision to make. But talk it over with him first. That’s the right way to do this, and now everybody’s cards are on the table,” before she pushed off the doorway, she’d been leaning against and walked past Sam down the hall. 

“Where are you going?” 

“I don’t know . . . Bobby’s, I think, just not in this universe . . . another one.” Sam ducked his head and started to smile, like he’d been had, and Dean said, “I ain't lyin', Sam.”

Sam started to turn and say, “Yeah, sure, Dean . . . I –“

“How do you think she knows all that stuff about us? I didn’t tell her . . . she’s from the universe where I’m going.”

Sam threw him a bitch face and said, “So, I say I want to keep things business, and you –“

“No, Sam, I’m not making it up, and I’m not doing it to get you to agree to be my brother again. I don’t want you to be my brother.”

Sam stopped, and whatever Sam had been feeling, anger, annoyance, disgust, it vanished . . . almost as fast as when Beth had said what she did. “I just need some time, Dean. I didn’t mean –“

“I know you didn’t, but I do . . . and it has nothing to do with what happened with Kevin. For me, that happened, like 2 ½ years ago. I’m not good with it, but things got so much worse after it that . . . I want you to have a chance at a good life . . . tie up any loose ends . . . We just tied up the one with Garth. She can give you a sigil she knows that will kill Gadreel. You could carve it into -“

“Wait, so you’re serious?”

“That’s what I’m trying to say, Sammy . . . I’m done. I’ve seen where this road heads, and I don’t want that for you . . . not even sure I want that for me.“

Sam came back into the room, looking like he didn't know whether to be mad or hurt, and said, “So, it’s over just like that?”

“Yeah, Sam . . . You’re free. You don’t have to worry about –“

Sam looked behind him and said, “You haven’t even said her name once the whole time she's been around. Do you even know it, or are you throwing everything away –“

“Her name's Beth. I’m trying not to get too attached . . . She understands. It’s just –“

“Well, is leaving something only you can do?”

“Yeah, it –“

Her voice came floating back around the corner saying, “No . . . Tell him the rest, Dean. Tell him what happened the last 2 ½ years . . . Tell him what you saw happen to him . . . Tell him why you feel empty inside . . . And tell him what you're going to be doing when you leave.” 

“Mind if I do this alone?”

“Are you going to tell him the truth?”

“Yeah.” 

“Promise?”

He smiled briefly. “Yeah . . . have to now.” He waited until he heard her leave and then looked at Sam. “Not really sure where to start. Guess maybe I should start with . . . I did something stupid the first time around and go from there.”


	99. Personal Choices and Not Listening

Sam listened to what Dean was saying, and at first, he still hadn’t been sure Dean wasn’t just messing with him or maybe trying to get back at him. It wasn’t what his brother said that convinced him, it was his brother’s whole demeanor. He knew his brother better than anyone, and the Dean in front of him . . . he was missing that spark Dean always had even in the worst of times. Whatever bad place Sam had been in lately because of Gadreel, Kevin, and Dean . . . it’d been a bad place, but where Dean was now . . . It was like Dean’s soul had been sucked out, although he assured Sam, that hadn’t happened with God’s sister.

He might still be hurt and angry about what Dean did, but that truly was old news for his brother. Sam wasn’t entirely sure what that meant . . . that they were separated by 2 ½ years and weren’t even close to being on the same page anymore . . . on the other hand, if they were on the same page, then it’d mean he would be dead, or that’s what he gathered from what Dean had said so far. 

Stopping Dean mid-sentence, Sam said, “Why’d you come back to now?” Was it so it would be easier for Dean to leave, maybe make it so Dean could leave with a clear conscience if he knew Sam was mad at him with good reason? 

“I, uh, I don't know. At first I wanted her to kill Abaddon in the past before Henry went to the future, so Dad would’ve gotten a different life and gave us different lives, but she talked me out of it. We came back to when I would’ve gone with Crowley to get the Mark, and I thought if I couldn’t remember all the rest of it, that all I’d know is that you were pissed at me, and I’d want to leave with her when she gave me her pitch . . . but she said if I did that without remembering the last 2 ½ years, I wouldn’t remember you and me being all right again or any of the good things that’d happened in that time. And maybe I didn’t want you being pissed at me to be the last thing I remembered.”

“Okay, well why’d you stay past when Beth showed up in place of Crowley at this bar you were talking about?”

“She wouldn’t let me make my choice before she killed Abaddon. She wanted me to wait until I got to that bar, remembering everything that was going to happen, so I could make my decision then.”

To Sam, that meant there was hope. “But you’re still here. You haven’t decided –“

“She won’t tell me the thing I need to do to sign onto the team, or she wouldn’t until I saw you.”

“Does she not want you to –“

Dean shook his head in the same defeated manner he did everything now and said, “She does . . . She’s just looking out for me . . . making sure I don’t do something I’ll regret.”

Intentional or not, she’d bought Sam time to try and bring Dean around, but he felt like that time was running out. “And when you get to her universe where there are 10,000 people left, what –“

“That they’ve been able to find . . . doesn’t mean that’s all . . . And I don’t know what I’ll do when I get there . . . punching God might be a place to start. He’s teaching English to 2nd graders, or that’s what I hear.”

That sounded more like his Dean. Sam smiled marginally and asked, “Is that why you’re going?”

“More like a sign on bonus . . . No, I just . . . I’ve seen as bad as it can get, Sam . . . I watched you die, got the other people who came to help us killed . . . I was the only one left, and I don’t mean out of everyone I knew . . . I mean everywhere. Everyone on the planet . . . they got these black veins, and they were under Amara’s control . . . until they died, and she kept wanting me to . . . I don’t know what . . . maybe take her brother’s place or . . . I don’t know. I almost did . . . I thought about it . . . maybe I was going to, but then I heard this voice in my head . . . and –“

“What, like your conscience, or . . . “

Dean glanced towards the doorway and shook his head. “Her . . . She was looking for the other two Deans she had with her, but –“

“Wait there are two more of you here?”

Dean smiled again briefly and said, “Yeah, one with the Mark I told you I got and one that's 4 . . . You’re here as 6 month old.”

Sam sat forward. "So, they got us when –“

“Just before . . . from another universe. They got their Mom and Dad to sign on too, but their parents are their own team and ended up in another universe . . . have to wait until we get to the end to see them again, maybe, but I think they’ll make it. Mom and Dad working together to convince you and me not to do something . . . think we’ll listen to what they say in any universe.”

Sam laughed and said, “After we put them through all the tests . . . I want to see them.”

“Can’t if –“

“No, I mean, I want to see the other two Dean Winchesters and the baby me . . . I just have one more question. Is Beth going to verbally bitch slap me again?”

Dean smiled more of a full-fledged smile than Sam had seen so far and said, “She did, didn’t she? Think she knows the right buttons to push with you . . . got you right where she wanted you, and –“

“Gave me whiplash, so I would hear what she was saying. Yeah, I figured that . . . She does that kind of thing to her Sam?”

Sighing, Dean said, “No, she killed him.” At Sam’s pause, Dean said, “He went evil . . . made her world the nightmare it is evil . . . He was coming back from it, and then they started this mission. He lost it. Started wanting to kill his brother and replace him with one of the others, and then Gabriel sent him to rehab or something, and he came out wanting to kill the other versions of me to get rid of the temptation or something . . . she killed him . . . I mean I guess he had black eyes and a demon voice and hadn’t touched demon blood in years.”

Right. “So, uh, is that why you don’t want me to come with –“

“No, I want what's maybe best for both of us even if it’s not what either of us really wants.”

“Wait Gabriel? As in Gabriel, Gabriel?”

“Yeah, he’s her Dad . . . No, it doesn’t mean what you think it does. It’s complicated, but she’s human, and even if she weren’t, I don’t think I would care.” 

That didn’t sound like his brother. Maybe he should take the time to get to know her more if she was more than a fling for his brother. “So, are you and her –“

“No, it’s not what she needs. It’s not what I need . . . I’m good with where things are . . . She’s my anchor, I think . . . like I said, when I heard her voice, it pulled me back . . . not just from the edge. I was already over the edge and on my way down, but it pulled me back . . . I just need something to fill this empty nothing I feel . . . a friend. That’s all it is.”

Yeah, well, Sam still wanted to get to know her better.

\----------------------

Sam took in the sight in front of him without really knowing what to think or do. The kids . . . he’d seen pictures of he and Dean when they were that age, and seeing them was a little surreal. The kid Dean was playing with some cars and the baby appeared to have just gotten out of the bath. It was a little weird seeing another Dean trying to get him dressed, almost as weird as seeing the other Dean, period. 

That Dean didn’t look like he’d been expecting Sam either. Looking over his shoulder to talk to his brother, Sam asked, “He’s the one with that Mark you were telling me about?” His brother nodded, and Sam looked at the other Dean. He could see it . . . That Dean’s forearm was exposed, because his sleeves were still rolled up after giving the baby a bath. The next thing Sam said wasn’t even something he was expecting to say. “So, you guys are supposed to be raising them and . . . what, saving the universe at the same time?”

“Yeah, and watching a baby ogre.” Looking to his left, Sam saw Beth. 

“You need an extra pair of hands to help with the kids?” She opened her mouth, and Sam’s brother smacked his arm with the back of his hand. “What, Dean? You get to make your choice, and I get to make mine. Maybe I don’t want to hunt. I could take the kids off their hands, while they do their thing, and you can do what you have to do to –“

“Well, then I’m not going.”

Sam glanced at him. That was a half-hearted protest at best . . . almost like his brother was going through the motions and saying what he thought he should. There’s no way he was letting his brother leave, like this. “You will . . . You –“

Dean pulled him out of the room and said, “I only brought you, so you’d see that I’ll be all right, Sammy . . . This is what I need, cause of what I said earlier, but I have to do it without you . . . I’m not trying to guilt you into coming, and I don't want you to think I don’t want you to come, but I need you not to come. You and me together to the end . . . sounds a whole lot better than it is when you see what it’s like . . . and then I didn’t even die. Amara wouldn’t let me . . . and I didn’t just watch you die once. I watched you die twice . . . once was you and the other time was another you . . . I need to know that you’re here, getting the life you deserve . . . and you won’t get that with me around . . . might not be the Darkness, but it’ll be something . . . I can’t watch you die again, and we can’t keep sacrificing everyone else for –“

“What about what I need? What if what I need is to make my own choice? Maybe I need to do this. I don’t know what you saw in the next 2 ½ years, but I know I’m the reason you are the way you are now . . . so it must’ve been as big as you’re saying, and I need to stop that from happening any way I can by helping them stop it from happening other places. I just don’t want to do it as a hunter. Maybe I do want to take care of those two kids, because you did it for me when we were kids, and now it’s my turn . . . and if we get to the finish line, maybe I want to see our parents again. When we get there, you don’t have to talk to me or even look at me, but I’ll be there if you do want to talk.” Dean’s shoulders dropped in defeat, but it wasn’t a victory Sam really wanted. He wanted his brother to be his brother and argue or . . . something. “What do I have to do to agree?” 

Dean shrugged and pointed towards the door. “She knows.” Yeah, but he bet Dean knew too. Dean just wouldn’t tell him. He’d probably do it when Sam turned his back, so Sam kept his eyes on Dean and took a step back to look into the room. Dean shook his head. “I’m done, Sam . . . Do what you want.” Yeah, that was even worse. There’s no way Sam was letting Dean do this alone now.


	100. Hope Everlasting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beth is going to get books with the newest Dean (the one from the last universe).

“What just happened?”

Looking around, I wondered that myself. “Uh, well, we jumped to a different universe . . . Amara must be out, because we’re way in the past, and I’m thinking Chuck thought your brother’s idea was a good one the last time?” Sam looked at me for an explanation on what I’d meant, so I said, “God talks back . . . You just have to know how to listen,” before I picked up my bags and looked at the rest of our group. 

Maybe the fact that we all showed up together meant we were getting closer to the end, or maybe it just meant this Sam and Dean needed our help more on a personal level before they could be sent off on their own. “Uh, come on, we should find figure out the date, find somewhere to stay until we can figure out a way to blend in, and uh, do something with Chewy.”

Sam looked to his left, realized maybe for the first time he wasn’t actually standing next to his brother, and literally jumped back half a step. “What the hell is that?”

“Chewy . . . He’s the ogre I was talking about. What, you didn't think I was talking about the baby you, did you?" Sam looked like he didn't know how to answer that, so I added, "He just looks more like a monster than most, but, uh . . . here give him this, and he’ll probably stop crying.” I handed Sam Chewy’s stuffed rabbit, and he reluctantly handed it towards Chewy, who snatched it away from him and started petting it before doing some kind of a happy ogre dance, and then giving Sam a hug that Sam wasn’t all that thrilled to get. “I taught him that . . . the hug, not the happy dance.”

My Dean snorted as he took the kid Dean’s hand and said, “Yeah, but her happy dance isn’t much better,” before he lead the way down the street. It looked like we’d lucked out as far as not having to stay in motel. I think this abandoned house would suit us just fine with our numbers, and we wouldn’t have to keep Chewy in a trailer the whole time. Maybe he could get his own room.

“How many of these have you done?” 

I went from watching my Dean pick the lock on the back door to looking up at Sam. “Uh, Purgatory Sam and Dean, Solo-Dean, Lilith, Lilith again with my crazy twin, then the one with Dean as a demon, another one with Cain, and one where Dean was cured . . . then we got sent to 1983, and then your universe. Plus, I spent 13 years reliving part of your guys’ life before we did this, so I guess . . . 10 and now this one, but as for how many universes the whole team has cleared, I don't know . . . I guess it depends if teams were split up into 2, 2, 2, and 2, or 3, 3, and 2 . . . and now John and Mary are a team, so that adds another one . . . roughly guessing based on combined time between 1983 and the last one, I’d say the other teams could’ve each cleared 2 universes in that time, so like . . . 16 or 18 is how many have been cleared . . . maybe 17 or 19 if John and Mary have cleared their universe already. I have no idea how many are left.” 

“Aren’t you tired? I mean –“

“Exhausted. I’m really happy you agreed to be the babysitter for a while.” That seemed to make Sam happy. That’s good. I wanted him to feel like he’d made a good choice and not regret it. It was too late for him to change his mind now, might as well be okay with it . . . however long it lasted. He’d still probably do an about-face when we got to my universe, because it’s what he did after jumping from our do-over life there without being able to remember it . . . But maybe I was wrong. Maybe that was just because there was more darkness in my Sam than he could handle. 

What I really didn't want to happen was for him to start blaming his brother. It’s the last thing his brother needed. His brother really had just been trying to say goodbye. This Sam probably shouldn't be here. They still weren’t good, because Sam wasn’t listening to what his brother said. He was worried about Dean, but at the same time, I think he was still too affected by the Gadreel fiasco, so anything Dean said he wanted or thought was best for them was the opposite of what Sam was going to do. 

I might’ve made a mistake. I’d wanted Dean to fill Sam in on why he was going and why he’d needed Sam to stay, so he could get some closure and end on a half-way decent note, because that Dean was already past breaking point . . . Imagine seeing not just most people dying, young and old, stranger and brother, but everyone, and imagine them dying, because you were trying to do the right thing and not give God’s sister what she wanted, not just wanted, but maybe needed, so she didn’t die off after she killed her brother . . . to become another God at one with her . . . I think you’d be done too, so I hadn’t wanted him to leave with things being bad between he and Sam, but . . . maybe I should have listened to him. 

Sam was stubborn, and I’d given in and brought Sam to get him to stop nagging his brother and me about it when I really just wanted to get home . . . home, somewhere we still weren’t . . . Until we got here, I don’t think Sam had really believed what anyone had said to him. I needed to keep things copacetic with him now . . . on the other hand, maybe it might make my Dean happy. He hadn’t said a whole lot to try and talk Sam out of it.

Now, I just needed to find a good book, one that I hadn’t read already, which wasn’t going to be easy. I needed to take my mind off of things for a while. “Mind if I come with you?”

I looked over my shoulder at Dean. He looked like he needed some space. He’d needed a lot of it, since we met him. I’d imagine being the last man on the planet, that you’d be happy to see people again, including your brother, but it’d be a difficult adjustment to make. I knew, because as someone from a mostly dead planet, I felt the same in these modern universes. “Yeah, sure . . . I mean, I don’t mind.”

He looked back at everyone else exploring the new house and setting up wards before nodding and following me out. “What are you thinking of getting?”

“I don’t know . . . there are a lot of good books from the 50s, like _The Lord of the Flies, Fahrenheit 451, The Catcher in the Rye, The Lord of the Rings, Martian Chronicles, On the Road_ . . . It’s just I’ve read all those. I still haven’t read _Invisible Man_ or _Atlas Shrugged_ or _East of Eden_. Maybe I might get into Isaac Asimov. I think _I, Robot_ and _Foundation_ came out in this decade. I have no interest in reading _Lolita_ or _Doctor Zhivago_.”

“Anything you could suggest for me?”

I smiled briefly and said, “I don’t know. Would _I Am Legend_ hit too close to home, or –“

“That was a book first?”

“Yeah."

"Is it a lot different, or if I saw the movie, am I going to be wasting my time.” 

“Uhh, it’s a lot different, but now that I think about it . . . maybe I shouldn’t have suggested it. It’s depressing, and -”

“Last man standing on a planet of zombies?”

“Well, vampires, but yeah.”

“What else ya got.”

I glanced at him and ignored how that made me feel. “Uh, C.S. Lewis is pretty big right about now.”

“Like the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe?” I nodded, and Dean thought about it. “What else?”

“Uh, if we’re in 1958 again . . . there should be at least one Vonnegut book, but Ray Bradbury is probably your best bet if you don’t want to go with the Asimov stuff.”

“That _The Illustrated Man_ guy?”

“Yeah.” 

“Might go with him . . . and maybe I’ll steal your Asimov too . . . Hey, is it just me, or is everyone looking at you?”

I glanced down the sidewalk. “Both of us . . . Should probably get some clothes to fit in around here.”

“How are you gonna pay for all this? I mean, I have money, but . . . I don’t think I’m gonna be able to get more doing what I’m used to doing to get money from the 50s.”

“Uh, well, we’re not paying. You’re gonna help me steal it. I’m guessing it’s a whole lot easier to do now too.”

“Do we have to . . . I mean, you’re getting all this stuff. You think we’re going to be here for a while?”

“I don’t know . . . depends on the month. If it’s a lot before August, then it means there’s something really different about this universe that we have to figure out. That’s what happened in 1983.”

“And you think Chuck got the idea after what I said in the last universe?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“So, there might be another me in the future that’s in the same kind of place I was?”

“Might be . . . could be another Winchester.”

“Right, because it could be a really weird universe?” I nodded, so Dean said, “If it is me though, you should leave him where he is and just reset everything . . . He’ll be better off not knowing about any of the stuff that’s happened.”

“I’m sorry if –“

“I’m good. Just thought maybe we could do something for someone else . . . even if it’s me . . . it’s not really me. Tired of doing things for me . . . Well, that, and if we leave whoever is in the future where he is, she won’t go looking for him and zero in on your Dean again.”

“Yeah, okay. We shouldn’t take too long to figure it out though, or she’ll notice anyway . . . if not at first, at least when she realizes her brother isn’t really dead.”

“So, that’s really what you think is going on here?”

“I don’t know, Dean . . . I’m not really sure about anything anymore . . . I’m just trying to work it all out . . . Think I can almost see the big picture . . . sometimes I’m wrong and I have to re-work it, and I’m not suggesting anything to anyone again, because I don’t want Chuck taking it and running with it if he thinks it’s a good idea but hadn’t thought of it already, like merging two Deans into one.”

“You want me to take it for you for a while?”

“Take what?” 

“The strategizing. It’s not like he listens to me anyway.”

“He does. He’s always listening. He –“

“Not the same way . . . You’re like surround sound, and we’re like . . . flies buzzing in the background . . . and I’m guessing that’s just when we say his name or pray or whatever . . . everyone else who isn’t on this team is like . . . white noise. He might hear, but he doesn’t listen . . . he tunes it out . . . Let me take it or at least help. Besides, that’s not the only reason you’re having problems. You’re trying to find a way around him hearing you, but it isn't something you can cheat, and it’ll drive you crazy when all you really need to do is hand it off to someone else.” 

“What about why we’re here? It was your idea to –“

“It was your idea to go to 1958. All I said was that we should keep Henry from going through that time portal . . . I think Chuck already had this planned, just like he probably had the idea to merge your Dean with another one, but let's say you're right, and he just liked the idea of sending us to the 50s and ran with it, I’m thinking he got the idea from you.” 

“But he doesn’t know what I’m thinking all the time, just –“

“Yeah, and you prayed to him from 1958 . . . pretty sure he figured out where we were, or we wouldn’t have ended up in that bar right after you killed Abaddon . . . Look, I get it. You feel alone and like you’re the only one who can call the shots. You’re responsible for everyone on this team even if they aren’t here, and –“

“At least 3 of them have died already?” He stopped and slumped, but didn’t answer, so I said, “It was my Cas. That’s why Dean’s been distant since he killed him . . . he feels guilty, and he doesn’t want me to know Cas is gone, but you bought our story way too easily, and you knew the main points in a universe that can be changed . . . You ran through them all when you were trying to convince me to keep Henry from jumping to the future . . . and we hadn’t really gone over those with you in too much detail yet . . . and I know at least the Sam from Purgatory was there . . . That’s why you said you saw your brother die twice when you were trying to convince him not to come with us when you were out in the hallway . . . I’m just not sure if they were alone, or if –“

He stopped walking altogether, so I did too, and he said, “Your daughter wasn’t with them.”

I relaxed a little and maybe tried to hold back on tearing up at the relief I felt. “It was another Dean? You weren’t too surprised by my Dean when you woke up, which means you probably saw another Dean somewhere along the line, one who wasn’t protected under Amara, because he’d never gotten the Mark . . . just not sure if it was the Dean from Purgatory or the solo-Dean . . . or was it my Dad?”

“It was that Sam’s brother . . . I didn’t see your Dad either.”

“So, you had to see the together to the end thing twice . . . once where you lived without Sam and the other where you watched another you die with him?” He nodded briefly and looked away, so I said, “They, uh . . . well, if we erased that from happening, it means they . . . they didn’t die, right? I mean –“

Looking down at me, Dean said, “I don’t know. I remember it happening . . . Does that mean it happened or not?”

“I don’t know.” I looked at the vial of Cas's grace around my neck and said, “We’ll go with . . . I guess that we erased it –“

“You do know. We didn’t erase it Beth . . . We trimmed back the branch to keep her from getting out, but the branch had to be there for us to trim, or we couldn’t have done it, right? God’s a dick, so I’m guessing everything that happened on what we trimmed just got . . . I don’t know . . . thrown away . . . not a big deal for the people who got killed that have a second chance now, but for 3 guys jumping in who shouldn’t have been there in the first place . . . probably got thrown away with all the rest.”

“Yeah, but maybe –“

“If they’re there the next place we’re all together, great, but don’t expect it. It’ll be worse if you do, and they're not there.”

“But that’s not how . . . I can’t –“

He stepped forward and put his arms around me for a hug that felt obligatory at first, but then he held me a little tighter and relaxed before saying, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your –“

“Well, they were my responsibility in my universe, but that’s not why I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry you lost them.”

“Like pity?”

“No . . . like I’m sorry for your loss.”

“The guys we picked up in Purgatory wanted to find a way to be together . . . in the afterlife. Maybe they took yours and Sam’s spots.”

“I’m guessing they went nowhere, just like Cas and everything else on that branch. No afterlife . . . no Death’s lock up . . . just wiped out, like they were nothing.”

“Why are you –“

“Because the last thing you need is hope . . . might be what got you through being in Heaven and an Apocalypse, but it’s probably what’ll get you killed too . . . Having it won’t, but having it stripped away will . . . and some day that will happen. Should’ve happened already . . . not sure how it hasn’t, but it will.”

I didn’t say anything at first. I was mainly trying to keep any tears from falling, so he rested his chin on top of my head, and finally, the only thing I could think to say was, “I’ll show you that you’re wrong, Dean Winchester . . . You’re hardly ever wrong, but you’ll see . . . It’s not hope that’s the enemy. The thing that takes it is. I’ll get yours back to you some day.” 

Sighing, Dean put his hand on the back of my head, like now he might feel pity for me and said, “Come on, got some stuff to steal.”

“Yeah? Are you hopeful we’ll succeed in that endeavour?” He breathed out a sad laugh and stepped back. “What? Start small.” 

“All right, fine. I’m hopeful we’ll succeed in robbing a bunch of stuff . . . if you stop crying . . . or don’t. Maybe we can use that . . . just make it look good . . . maybe look like you’re actually crying instead of just -” He wiped a tear away for me and said, “Nah, we’ll think of something else. Come on . . . tired of everyone looking at us, like we’re freaks.”


	101. Under the Surface

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is from the MoC Dean's point of view.

When the door opened, Dean paused in his conversation with Sam. Watching this Sam’s brother walk though, he almost laughed. “What the hell are you wearing? I’m gonna start calling you Ward.” The newest Dean was wearing a long sleeve maroon cardigan buttoned up with a tie and dress pants. Beth walked in about 30 seconds behind Ward, and Dean did laugh. “And who turned you into Veronica Lodge?” 

She touched the top of her head, probably because she’d gotten a haircut, and looked down at her black and white striped sweater and then down at her waist high, ¾ length, skinny black slacks. “You told him?” 

Ward smiled briefly. “No, but you just did.” Looking at Dean, Ward explained. “She might’ve stopped by a comic book store on the way to get clothes, so she could find the right disguise.” 

Sam stood, looking like he was going to go get some throwback clothes too and asked, “And how’d you pay for it?” 

“Uh, 5-finger discount.”

Glancing towards Beth, Sam said, “What about her –“

“Right kind of diversion outside, and nobody was paying attention when she slipped out the back after they were done with her hair. Should see what she got us to wear when we try to get into the bunker.”

“Wait. What? Why are we going to go to the bunker?”

Ward glanced at Beth, and she answered. “Well, first we’re going to go talk to Millie, and then we’re going to check out the bunker, but we needed casual wear to talk to Millie first.” Ward nudged her, and she added, “It’s Halloween . . . 1958 . . . we can take the kid Dean trick-or-treating tonight, and talk to her then . . . We just want to know why we’re here after August and maybe see if it means there’s something different, like maybe Henry is still here, or something. After we find out from her what the status on Henry is, we’ll go to the bunker. I have a spare key . . . I made it for my universe, but it works in all the others I’ve tried it in so far . . . We get to keep the things we had on us from our universes when we left, and, uh . . . if anybody is there, we’ll go in as French Men of Letters. I guess in your universe there was a French Chapter operating in the 40s, so maybe it's still around now here.”

Dean got to his feet too and said, “So, you’re going as Veronica Lodge for Halloween, and –“

“No, this is my cover while I’m here.” 

Right. Like the cover she had in 1983. “And you got us all stuff to wear like what he’s wearing?” 

Beth looked at Ward, and Ward said, “It was this or a suit . . . just got you something . . . Sam’s staying here to watch the baby, right?”

Oh yeah, Sam did sign onto this to be the kids’ babysitter. Sam didn’t look all that happy about it right now though. “What am I supposed to wear if someone comes to the door?”

Dean tried to diffuse the situation. “Just don’t answer the door. Don’t know why anyone would walk up to this place anyway. Looks abandoned.”

“I think it’s a lovely 1920s Dutch Colonial.” Everyone looked at Beth. “What? I’ve stayed in a lot of abandoned houses. I know the kinds I like. I prefer Victorian Gingerbread houses and ahead of those, I like English Cottages, except I wouldn’t go for a thatched roof, because those tend to leak . . . My favorites are cabins . . . cozy cabins with lots of character, like a wood burning stove, or –“

Sam interrupted her. “Are you writing for Better Homes & -“

“Abandoned Spaces, yeah sure . . . got an interview on Monday.” She waited a beat and after having successfully caught Sam off guard, said, “I’m trying to let you know why it’s not a bad thing if you have to stay here . . . Also, it won’t be that easy. There are lots of places for kids to hide in here, and –“

“What if I want to take the baby trick-or-treating?”

Oh. Yeah, Sam was trying to give the kids the life he never got. Dean could get behind that. “Yeah, sure, Sam, you can probably blend in with everyone else tonight. Might want to look into getting you something for tomorrow, just uh –“

Ward spoke up. “You’re going to have a hard time finding anything in his size.” 

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “You mean for free . . . What if I want to pay for it?”

Why was there a weird tension in the air? Dean looked down at his chest. Was it coming from him or the others in room?

Ward shrugged in response to Sam’s question. “Then pay for it, but you’re gonna have a hard time doing that when your money is all from after the year 2000.”

Dean checked the Mark . . . wasn’t tingling or crying out for anything. He glanced around the room again . . . Maybe it was the room . . . No, it wasn’t just the room . . . It was him too. Why would he be feeling . . . Oh. Beth’s Dean was upset about something.

Sam huffed in annoyance. “There’s a right way, and a wrong way –“

Beth chimed in with a little accent Dean had never heard her do until now. “You’ve been doing this for a while and know the difference, then do you?” 

Dean glanced at Sam’s reaction to that and felt the tension grow. Beth’s Dean didn’t like something about Sam right now . . . but Sam hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Beth and Ward were ganging up on him. Now Dean was starting to feel pissed off . . . Was that him or not? Ugh, it was so frustrating. He hated this. He barely heard Ward say, “Sam, maybe back off a little. You said you’d watch the kids, and if that’s what you want to do, fine, but that’s not why you want to take the baby Sam out trick-or-treating. You just want to do it, because we made plans without you, and right now you’re on this kick of –“

“Wanting to make my own choice on things? Yeah, you know what? I am. I think I’ve earned the right to –“

On reflex, Dean’s hand went to Sam’s shoulder to get Sam’s attention. “Uh, I get that your upset right now, but save it for when the mission is over . . . If you want to take off as soon as we get to Beth’s universe, fine, but right now, our lives depend on us getting along . . . All they did was go shopping, so –“

Sam turned on him. “Funny, I thought my brother said the Dean and Sam that died in our universe got along just fine, and they’re dead.”

Dean glanced at Beth to see how she responded to that . . . She gave him a nod to let him knew she already knew. Dean threw Ward a look. How long had she known? How'd she find out? Was she okay? Is that why she'd been a little off lately? That's where most of his attention was when he muttered, “Just calm down Sam, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Or what, she’ll kill me, the way –“ 

That earned Dean’s full-attention. “I was there when that happened, so I know why she did it. Do you?”

“I went evil, and wanted to kill –“

“He nailed me to a support beam with my hands above my head and cut me open from here to here.” Dean stopped to point from his lower torso to his chin before adding, “Split my ribs apart, pulled my lungs out . . . started pulling everything else out of me he could and pouring holy water in me, because I was a demon . . . and I was just the first one on his list . . . He had that place wired to kill anyone who came in through the doors or windows . . . Yeah, he went evil.”

“Then how’d she get around –“

“Because she’s really fucking good at what she does . . . not even sure what you’re doing here, Sam . . . You want to make your own choices on things, well that’s awesome . . . glad you’re finally getting with the program, but maybe start by not making stupid choices . . . I mean, you’re just like a big, whining, crying baby version of you at 6 months old . . . and every time you fuck up you never take responsibility for it. You –“

“Dean.” 

He looked at Beth, and her eyes flitted back and forth, as she looked for something in his face. “You’re not gonna tranq me, are you?”

She smiled briefly and shook her head. “No . . . why are you so angry?” He didn’t know. “How much of that came from you just now?” He didn’t know that either. “You’re going to have to work something out with him soon, because he’s getting angrier and angrier . . . He never –“

“I let him take it.”

“What?”

“He said when we were a demon, I let him take what Sam did to me . . . and the cure . . . I mean I know it was me, because I remember everything, but I think it was both of us, like one person, and . . . Yeah, see he doesn’t think so . . . He’s getting pissed off again. Anyway, I think, uh . . . I think maybe he got tortured by Sam one too many times, so maybe he’s not quite the same as he used to be.”

“Angrier?”

Dean nodded, and then looked at Ward when Ward spoke to Sam. “You made your choice, and it was to babysit. Stick with that . . . and, uh, maybe don’t get aggressive with her. Think that’s what set him off.” 

Ward’s gaze flicked towards Dean for confirmation, and Dean said, “I don’t know . . . I don’t think that’s all it was.”

Ward’s eyebrows arched. “What was it?”

“I don’t –“

“Well, you’re gonna have to figure it out . . . When I had the Mark, I only got that pissed at Sam when I was a demon . . . Is there something else you’re not saying?”

Dean glanced at Beth. “She, uh . . . She has a Mark on her soul, and it makes people want to kill her.”

“I know. “ Beth must’ve told Ward that, because Dean didn’t think he had. Then Ward said something that was really starting to annoy Dean. “So, you think her Dean –“

“Can we not call him her Dean?”

Ward slowly exhaled and said, “Okay, the other guy inside you . . . how’s that sound?”

“All kinds of wrong.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. The Dean from her universe and father of her child, he –“

“He’s gone.”

“But he’s not . . . you’re him. You just don’t want to be him, and you’re acting like there really are two of you . . . Maybe you even need to see you as two people to wrap your head around everything . . . and I get it. I mean, first you got the Mark, and that changed you. Then you were a demon, and that changed you more. Waking up from being cured, you were totally different because of what happened while you were a demon . . . and maybe you play up the idea that there are two of you in there for her, because she’s having a really hard time losing him . . . and she has lost him. You’re not letting yourself remember your life with her. You’re not even letting yourself remember half of what you found out about her when you were a demon, so you can stay as far away from that life as possible . . . All you remember is the shit that happened without her being in your life and Sam was a part of all of that . . . That’s why you’re pissed off. You know you should be choosing her . . . and you’re not . . . You have to tell her that you’re it and stop saying her Dean gone, because he’s not. He'd just rather start over with a blank slate. Not saying that is making it worse for her . . . point is . . . maybe you saw something in the way Sam started pulling shit out of thin air that had nothing to do with anything and took it as a sign Sam was being threatening to her, and you –“

“Got annoyed you two were ganging up on Sam. He didn’t do anything.”

“But you said all we did was go shopping.”

“I didn’t –“

“You did . . . that was all you. There’s only one of you, man . . . and the one of you there is, is really fucked up. You’re still a hell of a lot like Beth even if you aren’t a demon anymore. I mean she thinks all kinds of things she doesn’t say, and she feels all kinds of things she doesn’t know she feels because of what happened to her when she was in Heaven . . . There’s a lot going on under the surface for both of you. You’re pissed at Sam . . . you make yourself think you’re pissed at her. Then you really let him know what you think . . . What happened when you stabbed–“

Dean looked at Beth. “Did you tell him all this?”

Ward answered for her. “No. I’ve been using this thing we have to get to know her . . . It’s what you should’ve been doing from the get go, but you only let yourself do it every once in a while, because you’re hung up on Sam when the guy you were chose her, and –“

“How the hell do you know he told me that? Are you –“

Ward sighed. “He? It’s like I said. That’s you, and it’s pretty obvious from the life you had with her, that’s what you did . . . Don't need to read your mind to know that.”

Before Dean could respond, Beth looked at Sam and said, “Well, this is a little awkward . . . bet you’re wishing you asked more questions now, huh?” 

Sam looked like he took a breath he’d be holding and gave her a faint smile. “A little . . . just not sure who to ask.”


	102. Halloween

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first Dean before the break is the newest Dean, and so is the Dean at the end who is going with Beth and kid Dean trick-or-treating. The Dean in the middle is Beth's Dean (MoC Dean).

Dean put his hand up in front of me to stop me from going in kid Dean’s room. “Sailors fighting in the dance hall . . . hm hm cavemen go . . . hm hm lawman beating up the wrong guy.” 

“What’s he . . . is he singing David Bowie?”

I looked around the corner at kid Dean playing with his toy cars and smiled. “Yeah. Zeppelin might’ve been winning out for a while, but I still sing this to him every night before he goes to bed . . . What’s the name of the song, Dean?”

He looked back at me with a smile. “Life on Mars.” Looking at the adult Dean standing next to me, he said, “She took us to Mars.” I felt a little guilty when his attention excitedly went back on me. “Can we go there again?”

“Well, tonight, you’re going to be a fireman and get candy . . . it’s Halloween, and after your parents find a new house, you can spend all your time somewhere that’s a lot like Mars.” 

“Candy?! But I don’t look like a –“

“Think this’ll work?” I pulled the costume I’d stolen for him out from behind my back and he came running up to take it from me. “Okay –“ He wrapped his arms around my leg. I patted him on top the head, and he took a step back, so I crouched down in front of him to be closer to his eye level. “How are you doing, Dean? Haven’t had a chance to check in with you today.”

He looked around his room. “I like this place better than the last one, but it’s not home . . . When are we going to your planet?”

“Soon . . . You miss your parents?”

He hesitated and then smiled. “I do, but you’re doing a good job . . . Can Chewy stay in my room tonight when we get back.”

That’s the first time he’d asked that. “Why?”

Leaning forward, kid Dean whispered, “He doesn’t have anyone . . . You make things easier for me when I’m sad. I make things easier for him.”

He glanced up when the adult Dean asked, “What about Sammy?”

“Your brother and the tall Sam were with him all day. I think he misses me, but –“

Dean bent down to pick him up. “You wanna see him?” Kid Dean nodded. “Well, then let's go see him, and then we’ll get you in your costume. You can bring him back some candy.”

“And Chewy too?”

Dean snorted as he carried kid Dean down the hall. “Might make him sick. We’ll pick him up some steaks tomorrow, okay?”

\------------

Well, now what was I supposed to do? 5 minutes was too long. I could read. I was on page 5 of _Invisible Man_ , when someone knocked on my door. It was my Dean. “Hey.”

“Hey, you, uh . . . about what Sam said earlier . . . I just wanted to –“

“No, I’m not okay, but I can’t let myself think about it right now. I can't let myself think about the fact that the last time I saw any of them was when I was in the process of falling on my face after being drugged in the bunker . . . or any of the good times I had with Cas or the talks I had with Purgatory Dean or Sam . . . I won’t until I’m sure it was permanent, and I won’t know that until I get home. I don’t blame you . . . if that’s what you’re worried about with Cas. I know he was sick, and –“

“How long have you known?”

“I knew on the drive from where we landed in the last universe to Illinois that it was my Cas . . . I didn’t know who was with him. Cas was supposed to watch Rogue, or I'd thought he was supposed to watch her. I pieced together that the Sam from Purgatory was with him when the newest Dean told his brother he watched him die twice. I still didn’t know if that’s all that had been with Cas until today. The newest Dean said it wasn’t Rogue or Dad.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

 _Why didn’t you?_ Staring down at the book in my hands, I answered, “Like I said, I can’t think about it. I’m thinking about everything, but that . . . didn’t have to remember Adam was dead until 9 months later, and then I was in the middle of a civil war . . . and life kept on going, so I didn’t have a chance to feel anything about it . . . when I was confronted with him again, it hit home . . . I suspect the same will happen if . . . I don’t want to think about it or what’s happened to the other team until I get home and see what I’m dealing with.”

“About the thing Ward said. I –“

“Ward?”

“Yeah, the other me . . . looks like Ward Cleaver, anyway . . . about what he said.”

“You and I don’t really do the whole –“

“I’m not him.”

 _I know._ “Okay, I don’t do the whole talk it out thing. I don’t want to think about what he said either . . . I’ve got some candy to get.” I couldn’t. I was teetering on a knife’s edge. I just needed to keep my balance right now.

“Beth –“ I glanced behind him to let him know the kid Dean and apparently Ward Cleaver Dean were standing behind him, ready to go.

\----------

Kid Dean got a pretty good haul, and when we got to his grandparents house, I guess I was expecting for them to be out taking John trick-or-treating given our luck. They were home . . . both Millie and Henry. Their son John, wearing a little cowboy costume, happily gave Dean a handful of candy by the door. I so wanted a picture of that. Didn’t have my camera.

Walking away, Dean said, “Looks like you were right.”

“About Henry still being alive? Well, I guess, John could’ve been a girl or –“

“Well, yeah, that, but I meant about how me and Sam growing up Men of Letters didn't stop God's sister from getting out.”

“Oh. But maybe I was wrong about how much of a rebel you –“

“Nah, how else would I have gotten the Mark? Might’ve been wrong about Sam not caring enough to get it off though.”

“Yeah . . . So, what do we do now? Go check out the bunker to see if there’s anything left? Maybe Henry . . . wait.” If Henry was the last person to see Abaddon in 1958, maybe something happened, and she possessed him to try and get the key. Maybe she was still with Henry.

I reached into the bottom of kid Dean’s bag, pulled a flask out, and started marching back towards the house. Dean caught up, got in front of me, and I stopped. Leaning closer, he whispered, “So, you think Abaddon is –“ He tilted his head back over his shoulder towards the house.

“Might as well check while we’re here.”

Looking past me, Dean said, “We’ll come back.”

I turned, and saw a very innocent fireman standing there alone in the sidewalk, holding his bag of candy and watching us to see what was happening. “Yeah, okay.”

“And I’m coming with you this time.”

“If she’s even here.”

“Even if she’s not.”

"Why?"

"Because I think you're looking for trouble where it isn't, and as soon as you know she's not here, you'll go somewhere else to find it."

“You don’t think she’s here. If she were, then Amara wouldn’t have gotten out?”

“Pretty much.”

“But one of you could’ve gotten the Mark for something else.”

“What like –“

“Like you went to buy some honey from where all the high society Men of Letters types get their honey, Cain the beekeeper. You tripped over a bushel of corn, Cain gave you a hand up, and oops . . . you have the Mark.”

When he didn’t say anything, I looked over my shoulder at him, and he exhaled a laugh before going to pick up the kid Dean. “My money’s on her not being here. Something happened, and she went through without him. He decided to get out, since he was the last Men of Letters.”

“So, if we’re placing a bet, does that mean you hope you’re right?”

Putting kid Dean up on his shoulders, Dean looked back at me. “Don’t push your luck. Already said I hoped we’d be able to steal all that stuff today.”

“And did we? Yes, we did, so it wasn’t misplaced hope.” He turned and started walking, so I said, “What’s the wager?”

“Not sure yet. I’ll let you know.”

Abaddon wasn’t there. We did get to talk to Henry, and he hadn't retired, but the rest of the US Chapter was dead . . . almost. There was one guy left, the guy Abaddon had blinded. He and Henry were going to keep things going. It looked like Dean had been right about her going through to the future without Henry, presumably right into the Sam and Dean’s room in the future, except they wouldn’t have been expecting her without the 2 minute warning from Henry. I doubted they would’ve died, but who knew what her going through without Henry had done to this universe in the future? Is that where we needed to go or could we just convince Millie and Henry to come with us . . . okay, maybe I wanted Mary to have to deal with a Mother-in-law. The rest would just be weird if kid John and kid Dean were the same age. For now it looked like we were going into the future to do something about Abaddon when she got there, and I guess we'd be getting a look at what Sam and Dean would have been like if they grew up as Men of Letter legacies with their grandfather and then Dad as their teachers.


	103. More Than a Few Questions

“Figure out what to ask yet?”

Sam glanced in the Mark of Cain Dean’s direction. He hadn’t really talked to him since earlier. “Uh, not really . . . I was thinking . . . Well, I was thinking I’d ask when everyone got here. I’ll get a better picture that way. And don’t worry. I won’t get aggressive.”

The Dean with the Mark of Cain just went back to sharpening his knives, like that was fine with him. Sam didn’t want to sound too passive, or make it seem like he was afraid of this guy, because he wasn’t, but maybe a bit of respect was in order, respect he’d apparently thought he didn’t have to give, because he’d just assumed or maybe saw this guy as his brother. This Dean wasn’t his brother, and maybe Sam should keep that in mind. 

Maybe Sam thought he should also think a little more about how he spoke to the guy who was really his brother, because if he thought it was okay to be disrespectful to him, then maybe there was a problem there, and it wasn’t just because of what happened with Gadreel. He needed some time to think about it. He didn’t have much, but whatever time Sam had while Beth and his brother were out trick-or-treating was what he had, or it’s what he’d thought he had until they got back, had the kid Dean show them all how much candy he’d gotten, and then put him to bed before heading back out to see if Abaddon was in Henry. That was good. Sam realized, he’d needed more time than that.

Part of the problem was that maybe the guy he saw as his brother wasn’t his brother anymore either. Sam had known that when he’d been listening to his brother tell him what’d happened in that last 2 ½ years of his life, but he’d let himself forget it when he chose to do this. He had no brother, or at least not one that was recognizable to him as a brother. Sam had been left behind, while his brother lived his life. His brother actually seemed like he understood the others and the mission and knew what was at stake a lot better than Sam did. It wasn’t just because his brother got an extra 2 weeks with them either. His brother just had more life experience than Sam’d had.

And his brother was a lot more relaxed than the other two. Not carefree, but something else Sam couldn’t quite define yet. When they’d been arguing, Sam’s brother had been the calm one. He hadn’t taken the bait on any of the things Sam had said. Beth had. The Dean with a Mark of Cain had when Sam had responded to the bait she’d set for Sam . . . His brother? His brother had remained calm throughout, called Sam out on why Sam was really acting like a jerk, and then did the same with the Dean with a Mark of Cain. Sam didn’t know what to make of that.

He was in this alone, or it felt like he was, because maybe it felt like his brother had been sincere about wanting to keep his distance from Sam. Was it weird if the one bright light Sam had been able to see in this whole thing was the baby? It was him, so that was weird right? It just didn’t seem like him, and he guessed the baby wouldn’t be when he grew up, the same way that the kid Dean wouldn’t be like the two grown up Deans and neither of those Deans were exactly the same. Did life experience really change who you were that much? It was something of a social experiment, he thought he could maybe get behind when they got to their final destination, because he was interested in what happened with the kid Sam and Dean . . . especially when they would still grow up to be hunters, but also to have two parents.

Parents. Sam wasn’t sure what to make of seeing those again either. His Dad . . . well, would his Dad be the same, or if he was just starting out as a hunter and happy with his wife by his side, would he become the same man that Sam had known? Would it be easier for Sam not to argue with him all the time, or would it be harder to see a man wearing his Dad’s face and not know him . . . it was hard for Sam to do with his brother . . . or the adult Deans anyway.

What about his Mom? When he saw her, what would that be like? His Mom was dead. He was going to be around another Mary Winchester who wasn’t. Would she be the way his Mom was, or would she be a fake Mom, one that was different because of the life she’d lived changing the way it had . . . recently, when she met Beth and the Dean with the Mark of Cain? She had her own sons. She wouldn’t see him as her Sammy. She’d see him as a . . . as a guy she never wanted her son to be or as a failure or as a guy who destroyed worlds . . . he didn’t know what she’d see him as, but not as a son.

Wouldn’t that mean that it’d be easier if he didn’t meet her? He’d wanted to meet her, but now he wasn’t so sure. And then there was Beth . . . apparently, she’d had a child nobody had told him about, or he didn’t think they had. That was the Dean with the Mark of Cain’s child, but it wasn’t at the same time, and maybe that’s what Sam was having a really hard time understanding. He guessed he’d figure it out, but the idea that any Dean’d had a kid, or at least one he knew about and was helping to raise . . . that was . . . well, it was something Sam could only imagine would’ve happened in an alternate universe . . . He might be in a different universe from his own already, but it still hadn’t hit home until he heard about Dean’s child. 

And what was up with the ogre? He was upstairs, sleeping on the floor in the corner, with a children’s blanket and a stuffed rabbit right now. Was it an infant, or was it roughly the same age as the kid Dean. It acted like it an infant. Was it going to get bigger? It had big feet. Weren’t you supposed to be able to tell how big something was going to get by how big their paws were? Something told Sam this thing was going to get a lot bigger. He found himself intrigued by that, not just what they were going to do with it when it did get bigger, but also if they could raise it to fight its nature. It seemed happy when people were around and possessive of its things. It hadn’t tried to eat any of them, most specifically the baby Sam, so Sam figured that was probably a good thing, and they’d had it for a while, so they must be feeding it something, because it didn’t seem hungry.

“You’re weighing that side of the room down with all of your thinking, Sam . . . What’s on your mind?”

Sam glanced at the Dean with the Mark of Cain again. “Uh, I was just thinking about the ogre . . . You think we could teach it English?”

The Dean with the Mark of Cain smiled briefly. “Well, its Mom knew Latin, so probably. I just wouldn’t expect it to speak in Latin. I know it understands the word, ‘No,’ because it stops doing whatever it shouldn’t when Beth says that and looks like it’s going to cry.”

“Why does she tell it ‘no?’”

“Uh, sometimes he growls when you try to take something he thinks is his.“

“Has it . . . ‘he’ gotten violent?”

Shaking his head, Dean said, “No, just have to keep an eye on him. He might not mean to hurt someone, but he could, cause he’s so strong. I guess, it’s not a whole lot different than Lily, this little girl at Beth’s camp. She’s half-human, and half-monster. She’s Rogue’s best friend . . . she’s a few months older than Rogue, so she might not mean to hurt someone, but she could.”

“So much for a monster-free universe.”

Dean sat back and thought about it. “More of a . . . if it’s shades of gray, it’s still light enough to be considered good, universe. If there are monsters out there that are good, Beth’s going to save them right along with people . . . and she doesn’t save all the people . . . some of ‘em can’t be saved . . . think of the cases we’ve done where we think we’re going in expecting a monster or spirit or demon, and it turns out people are the ones behind the deaths and disappearances . . . those kinds of people have free-reign there . . . or they do until Beth comes across them.”

“Why hasn’t God done anything about that?”

“I don’t know. Got more than a few questions for him myself.”

Yeah, maybe that’s who Sam should be directing his questions to instead of the rest of them. “Is his sister really that bad?”

“I don’t know if she’s bad, but . . . I don’t think she knows the difference between right and wrong . . . think that might be the problem when she’s as powerful as she is and has a chip on her shoulder because God locked her up for so long. All she really wants to do is hurt God by destroying his toys . . . maybe do more than that if God fights back. It’s just that we’re the toys.”

Sam nodded in thought. “So, she’s like Chewy . . . and this Lily. She doesn’t understand her own strength?”

“No, she does . . . and she uses it. She just . . . guess she wants it to just be her and her brother, nobody else to take her brother’s attention away from her.”

“So, she’s me?” Instantly, Sam regretted saying that, because Dean laughed and looked like he was going to make fun of him. To rectify it, Sam said, “I mean that’s what I keep hearing from Beth . . . that I’m the one who can’t let go.”

The other Dean didn’t say anything for at least a minute. Sam had already moved on and was trying to figure out what was taking his brother so long when the other Dean cut through his thoughts. “Beth’s Sam . . . he used to say if he was Dark, then Beth was Light, and she was the only one who could stop him.”

“So, God and his sister are a bigger version of me and Beth . . . in her universe?” Dean shrugged. Interesting that Dean chose her without the Mark and was struggling with being with her while he had it. Probably shouldn't say that. There was probably a whole lot there Sam didn't understand. “Doesn’t that mean God is the only one who can deal with his sister? Why did all of us have to get involved?”

“We broke it, we have to fix it.”

“But we didn’t –“

“You did. You just don’t remember that you did and your brother does.”

“You think maybe I could remember too? If I did, then maybe all of this would make more sense.”

Thinking about it, Dean shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know what God’s willing to do as far as using his powers goes, because he doesn’t want his sister to know where he is, but he’s all right with using enough juice to get us into these universes. Letting you remember would probably take less than that . . . not sure why you’d want to remember it though . . . you’d have to remember the whole planet dying and then you dying and what it was like for your brother to watch you die.”

“Yeah, but I think that’s what it’s going to take for us to be on the same page . . . if I really got past all of what’s making me so angry right now, then I want that. I think it might be the only way I can really get my brother back.”


	104. We Need to Go

“Hello, Beth.” I abruptly sat up and turned the light on in our room. We were alone. Okay, but I still had to shake Dean awake. That wasn’t normal. He should've woken up with the way I'd sat up, or at the very least when I turned the light on.

“What?!”

“Get up. We’re leaving.”

“When’d you get in?”

“Late . . . you were already in bed. Go get the others. I’ve got to set something up in the backyard.” He just sort of laid there looking at me, so I gave him a little shove and said, “Move! Now! This isn’t a fire drill. Get your ass out of bed and go get the others.” In annoyance, he rolled to get out of his side of the bed, and went to put on his jeans. “Don’t worry about getting dressed. We’ll get dressed when we get there. Just grab your stuff and go.”

“Beth, what are we –“

“I don’t have time to explain. If you trust me even a little, just do what I said.” I picked up my bags and carried them to the door and then did one more thing that I was pretty sure would get at least the other adult Dean and Sam to wake up. I yelled. “Chewy! Wake up! Bring your rabbit!” Then I left Dean muttering in our room. 

Okay, where should I set this up? It had to be a flat place with no cracks. There was a plank of wood covering what I assumed was a hole for a well. That'd work. Just had time to set up our time spell. I was running low on some of the ingredients. I’d have to stock up again soon. When I was done, they still weren’t outside, and I instantly regretted leaving them in that house alone. Running back inside, I ran smack dab into . . . well, it looked like the newest Dean’s chest. “Beth, what are –“

“No time . . . we need to go. Where are –“

“Think your Dean and my Sam are doing a silent protest until –“

“Don’t say her name. Don’t think it. But she’s coming. We need to go without drawing more attention to ourselves.”

That’s all I need to say. His features steeled, and he turned back into the house, saying, “Get the kids. I’ll get them.” 

Running down the hall, I saw Chewy standing at the bottom of the stairs rubbing his eyes and holding onto his rabbit and blanket. “Good boy, Chewy.”

Kid Dean was already up and carrying Sam. He was wearing his firefighter helmet and asked, “Is there a fire?”

“Yeah, one upstairs. Take Sammy to the backyard and wait for me there. I’ll get your things.”

He ran out of the room holding Sam and shouting, “Come on, Chewy,” over his shoulder. Chewy went with him, and I thought maybe that Dean would have a friend for life, even if he never got a Cas.

I grabbed everything of theirs I could, but there wasn’t much, threw it into a bag, and wasn’t far behind them. In fact, I caught up with them at the back door. “Good job, Dean. Keep going. Run to that piece of wood over there near my bags.”

Stopping to look over my shoulder into the living room, I waited. The newest Dean was walking towards me. He looked pissed off. His brother, and my Dean . . . well, they looked pissed off too . . . and maybe like they were staying put. “You remember the time spell, Dean?” My Dean’s angry facade dropped for half a second, so I used it to add, “Good luck finding me . . . have a whole universe to search,” before turning to go back towards the kids.

Everyone was there by the time I got to where I'd set up the spell. Maybe bluffing did work on adults as well as kids, even adults as well versed at playing poker as Dean Winchester. Blocking my thoughts from man and goddess alike, I did the spell in record time and then breathed a sigh of relief when the backyard changed in appearance. There were people who lived here now, but they were probably asleep. Taking Sammy from kid Dean, I turned to grab my bags, and kid Dean took Chewy’s hand, so they could follow me out of the back yard. 

“Where are we going Beth?” 

“Further from here than we currently are, Sam. We need to steal a car. Nobody sleeps until this universe is done.”

My Dean grabbed my shoulder and said, “What the hell are we doing, Beth? You've been drinking. You wake up in the middle of the night and –“

“I wish I could tell you Dean, but you’ve been compromised. All I’m asking for is a little fucking faith.”

Breaking the tension, Sam said, “This might be a bad time to ask, but do you think you could ask God if I could remember the –“

“Yeah, sure. Chuck, it’d amazing if Sam understood why he needs to get his ass in gear.” Sam blinked a couple of times, and then crashed onto one of his knees, while holding his head . . . not too long before baby Sammy started crying. Looking up to the Heavens, I whispered in disgust, “Chuck, you are a fucking asshole,” before I tried comforting the baby after presumably he was given the same memories of Sam’s last 2 ½ years and dying. 

“Wait, did he just –“ I nodded, and the newest Dean muttered, “That mother- Here, I’ll take him. You get us a car. Three shots and half a pack of cigarettes doesn't make you drunk.”

Yeah, he'd been there when I had those shots . . . might've split the pack with me too, which I hadn't been expecting. By the time I found us a vehicle, broke in and got it started, the whole gang was walking out of the backyard and out onto a back street. It would appear that Sam was just as determined to get them out of there as his brother was now. Guess something good had come from it even if the baby was scarred for life. Possibly. Maybe he wouldn’t remember it? I didn’t know. What a mess. 

\------------------

Walking up to the doors of the bunker alone, I knocked first. I had the rest of them stashed somewhere safe, but not necessarily anywhere near here. Amara might start looking for them in places she knew they’d been in their lives, and if she knew them at all, this would be one of the first places she checked . . . at any point in time. She was a Goddess, so she could do that, right? She could track my Dean and had after less than a day of us being in this universe, so the last place he should be was anywhere near one of the places she might think to look for him. Why make it any easier for her? 

The other adult Dean and his brother couldn’t be here either in case she did show up. She’d recognize them both . . . maybe even the kids, and then she’d know what Chuck had done. It also meant that the Sam and Dean in this bunker were in danger now too from more than just Abaddon, but nobody was answering. 

Well, if they weren’t here, I . . . well, I wasn’t sure what to do. I could use my key and wait for them, but if Abaddon was coming through today, I had to find them, and I had no idea how to do that. They were presumably full-fledged Men of Letters . . . not hunters. Did they have homes near here, day jobs to keep up appearances? Maybe they did more hunting than we’d thought they’d do. Maybe something inside would let me know where they were or what they were doing. Using the key, I let myself in or I would have . . . if the place weren’t on lock down. Shit. Maybe Abaddon was already here.

I could try to get in the garage door, but it wasn’t all that easy to get past. It looked like it was, because it was just a normal garage door, but with the wardings it had on it . . . not even humans could get past it. I think this place might turn out to be more like Fort Knox than Fort Knox had been. Okay . . . I had training at this kind of thing . . . I knew how to get around supernatural lock boxes. I’d done it with Bela. I may not know all the wards that were up here, but I could get past them, given enough time, just like a safe, except . . . well, there wasn’t much time. Maybe no time . . . didn’t matter. I had to try, and if it didn’t work, I’d just have to think of something else, and I had to do it before Abaddon did whatever it was she was doing in there that would lead to one of them getting the Mark and before Amara figured out where I was. No pressure.


	105. Not Taking Life for Granted

Sam hadn’t seen the other him and the Dean from Purgatory or Beth’s Cas. They’d all gotten there after he’d died, but they must’ve gotten there at some point, because when he’d died, he hadn’t thought his brother would hold out for any real length of time. His brother had to have held out for at least another 3 months, and things had been bleak when Sam died. Maybe the whole planet hadn’t been wiped out, but it was heading that way. 

He’d gotten sick three times. Once when the D – better not say her name. Once, when she got out. Once somewhere in the middle, when God finally decided to show his face, but apparently hadn’t really been the real God, just a decoy, and once at the end, just like everyone else that’d been in Chicago at the time. The violence and mayhem, the feelings of hopelessness and despair and anger and pain . . . and through it all, Dean had been immune, not just immune, but untouched . . . ignored, a witness to the end of everything. His only options had been to join forces with her or resist, and . . . Sam sure would like to know what happened after he died, how Dean had gotten away from there . . . Was it another him, a Dean fresh out of a Purgatory, and a Cas from an Apocalyptic universe of his own that had done it? 

They must have, and his brother must’ve gotten attached to them in the following 3 months, but they died too . . . probably the same way Sam had. How his brother was still standing, Sam didn’t know. He was mad at God, but at the same time . . . God sure had spent a lot of effort on getting his brother out of that universe and out of harms way . . . maybe it’d been solely about preventing God’s sister from being released, but not necessarily. God could’ve just sent them to 1958, the way he had in this universe. Why send them to a time at the end when Dean needed them most? 

It meant that there was a part of Sam that was grateful to God for saving his brother and giving them both a second chance now. Sam was also glad that he’d made the right choice when it’d been presented to him, maybe not for the right reasons, because he’d been an idiot without his memories, but he’d pushed his way onto this team, and that’s exactly what he should’ve done. He wanted to be a part of this team and stop what’d happened in his universe from happening anywhere else.

Watching the Dean who still bore the Mark pace back and forth across the room, Sam said, “I thought we were supposed to get along until the mission was over.” That Dean turned, and yeah, Sam had said it, and he wasn’t even remotely sorry for saying it. “The two members that should be the strongest are at odds . . . I get why I wouldn’t listen last night. I didn’t understand, and maybe I was a jerk, because I was wrapped up in my own crap, but you . . . What’s your excuse?”

“She wasn’t telling me –“

“And that stopped you from following orders from Dad when you knew it’s what you had to do? It’s stopped you from listening to me when I’ve told you to do something without having time to explain it to you on a hunt? Face it, you’re jealous . . . That’s as much of a reason why you lost your cool with me yesterday as it is that I was threatening her. My brother may not want anything with her, but he’s hitting all the right notes, and you –“

“Jealous . . . you were doing all right up until then." Sam looked over his shoulder and saw his brother standing in the doorway. He hadn’t known his brother was there. He’d thought he was outside with the kids. Maybe the other Dean had too. He looked a little annoyed by the sight of him. "He knows he's got nothing to be jealous about, but maybe Beth does."

"What the hell are you -"

Sam's brother cut the MoC Dean off. "Maybe that’s why you wouldn’t listen to what Beth said . . . maybe you wanted to see God’s sister.” 

Maybe they did need to be more careful about what the other Dean did and why he did it when it came to the – God’s sister. Who knew what was really going on there? Well, maybe his brother did, and that’s why his brother was pushing the Dean with the Mark of Cain so hard . . . latching onto Beth the way he was and encouraging the other Dean to do the same. Maybe Sam should help him out some. If the MoC Dean didn't know it, then maybe he needed to be reminded he didn't have Beth in the bag. He had to play it right, or the MoC Dean would just get so pissed off about it, he'd tell Sam's brother to take her, and that wasn't the right move either. "I don't know. I still think he's jealous. You should've seen him last night, the longer you two were gone, the more agitated he got. When he woke up, she wanted him to get moving, but he wouldn't do it, because he didn't know where she'd been, but he'd never come right out and ask until he was pissed off enough to do it. Then she wouldn’t tell him why she wanted us to leave, but she told you, and then the first thing he complained about was her having a few drinks . . . I'm assuming he knew she had them with you."

His brother, apparently, not understanding what Sam was doing, said, "But she couldn’t tell him. He's been compromised if God’s sister was able to get into his head while he was asleep and then used that to hop over to our soul mate . . . the one person God’s sister can’t know about because of what she’s protecting."

What she was protecting, being what? Sam still didn't know that. He did notice that his brother had just said, 'our' soul mate, so either Dean had known what Sam was trying to accomplish and had been more subtle about it, or . . . yeah, Dean wasn't subtle. He just didn't realize what he'd said. That worked to Sam's advantage more. But not wanting to push it more than that, Sam said, "All I know is that I don't think he really understands what this team is doing if he can get sidetracked as easily as he has been with all this other stuff, and he has to understand it even if he doesn't know what it's really like to lose against God's sister."

Sam's brother exhaled a deep breath and shook his head while looking at the other Dean. "You don't want to find out what it’s like . . . Trust me. It’s not a pretty picture.”

The Dean with the Mark of Cain sat on the arm of a couch and said, “What was it like? Give me some kind of a frame of reference, so I –“

“Remember how you felt when you were a demon?” The MoC Dean nodded, so Sam said, “It was like that . . . except it wasn’t all just me . . . it was the whole world around me that felt the same kind of . . . rot and decay and hopelessness." 

Looking to Sam's brother for confirmation on that, the MoC Dean said, "Is that -"

"Not sure. I wasn't infected, but I know what it looked like from the outside, and yeah, I'd say that's a pretty good description . . . That’s what we’re up against."

Sam quickly added, "So maybe you’re the one who needs to stow your crap until the mission is done, and then do what you want with Beth or don’t do it . . . but put the mission first. That’s what she’s doing.” Now that he was the one in the position of understanding what the hell was happening for the most part, Sam was pretty happy to have that to throw back at the MoC Dean. 

The MoC Dean seemed to know that, because he smiled briefly before saying, "How does she know to do that though?”

“You mean, why does she feel the urgency more than you do if neither one of you really know what God’s sister is like?” The MoC Dean nodded, so Sam thought about it. “I don’t know. I don’t really know her, but . . . I’m guessing that having come from a universe that was already destroyed and having to go up against whatever it is she’s been up against, it prepared her to do what needs to be done." _Yes, I'm telling you that you need to remember that life for all our sakes._ But he wasn't going to say it. He and his brother had said enough about it, so Sam course corrected a little. "And who knows how much she really knows? I mean my brother said that her Cas explained the universe thing the way she explained it, picture and all . . . a tree with a forest. And her Cas said that’s the way God had explained it to her . . . Why explain it to her without the rest of her team being there?” 

Sam's brother filled him in on that one. “She met with him . . . in Heaven before he gave her life . . . It’s complicated. She signed up for something else, but he gave her a loose game plan for this too. She just didn’t know that’s what he was doing at the time, and then she forgot the meeting until she needed to remember it . . . and she read up a lot on the – God’s sister while she was in Heaven, but I’d say she knows to do whatever she has to do to get through this, because a lot has been taken from her, but she still has more to lose.”

Sam wished his brother would cool it with all that stuff he knew about her. If Sam had made his point, his brother was making it for him ten fold greater without meaning to do it, and Sam didn't want to push the MoC Dean and Beth apart, he was trying to push them together. Trying to smooth things over by keeping the conversation on topic, Sam said, “Like –“

“Like what’s left of her family and the kids at that camp . . . She doesn’t want it spilling over to her universe, and it could.”

Sam hadn’t thought about that. “So, what happened in our universe could happen –“

“Everywhere if just one of the – God’s sisters got out and went from universe to universe the way Chuck has us doing. Universes that never would have had her in them would get destroyed right along with all the rest.”

“So, there are more than just the ones they’ve been to already?”

Beth’s Dean spoke up and said, “Yeah. They’re made when something is added or taken away in a universe to make us follow a different path . . . I guess if something like that happened for every decision we’ve made, then there’d be a new universe every time we made a decision . . . think that’s the way Gabriel thinks of it.”

Hm. “So, in theory, there could be one where –“

The Dean with the Mark of Cain spoke up again and said, “Jess didn’t die? Yeah, and in that one, you never would’ve gone back to hunting, so we don’t have to do anything about that universe.” 

Could’ve picked an easier example for Sam to hear, but he understood what that Dean was saying. Maybe it made Sam feel a little bit of hope if he knew there were other versions of him out there that got that kind of a life. It made sense. The baby him was going to have a totally different – well, the baby could’ve had a totally different and better life if God hadn’t been a jerk and put horrible images into its head last night. “And when we’re done with the mission, what do we do?”

Both Deans shrugged and said, “Fix a universe we broke,” and just to sound different, the Dean with the Mark of Cain added, “Without breaking it again.” Yeah. How hard could that be? It’d already hit rock bottom. The only way from there was up, wasn’t it? Pretty hard to screw that up, or it should be. Sam hoped it was . . . but then he did just see what he and his brother were capable of doing when they put each other first above everyone else. 

How could they not do that? Maybe it was selfish, but they’d given their whole lives to this, and all they had left were one another. But knowing where that lead . . . maybe his brother was right. Maybe he and Dean needed to take a step back when they got to their final universe . . . still be brothers, but maybe put other people first again. He could do that. Maybe it’s something he even needed to do. 

He really was glad he’d gotten his memories back. It’d made a world of difference. He’d rather remember the bad stuff and dying, so he knew why he wanted to live and do better, than have the easier road of not remembering all those things and taking his second chance at life for granted.

“So, how long do we wait until –“ 

Sam laughed at the Dean with the Mark of Cain. “Until she tells us we’re in the clear, or I guess the way it works with you guys is we just end up in the middle of a road somewhere when it’s over, right?”

“Yeah, but if we’re on this mission, we should –“

Sam stopped him again. He knew that look, and it always meant trouble. “Our part of the mission is to stay awake at this point. Any chance we had at doing anything was ruined last night when God’s sister decided to show up in Beth’s dream.”

“Probably through me?”

Sam's brother turned to leave and said, "Probably."

"But that means she knows who Beth is now, right?"

Sam didn't know. "Maybe. But she definitely knows who you are and maybe who I am. We need to stay as far away from where she might be as possible, or we could lead her where we don't want." 

The MoC Dean nodded slowly, like he was taking that under advisement, but Sam knew that look too. He wouldn't. He'd just slip out when the rest of them weren't looking. Well, he guessed he'd signed on as the babysitter, and it looked like he'd be doing it for the adult Deans too . . . until he got to his new home, and then they could do what they wanted. Maybe they could go off and be one another's back up, and he could stay at the camp and help raise the kids there. It sounded like a plan. That's what he was going with for now.


	106. Running Out of Time

I’d gotten as far as I could. I was in the garage. I just couldn’t get in past that because of the way the door from the garage into the bunker was barred shut . . . guess that’s why it’s called lock down. It’s not like I could crawl through any air vents either . . . again lock down. All I could do now was pound on the door and try to get someone’s attention from somewhere closer than the door upstairs. Anyone’s attention would do really. Didn’t give a shit if it was Abaddon or some nameless Men of Letters or the Sam or Dean or John or Henry or anyone else from this universe. 

I heard scratching on the other side of the door near the floor and stopped. Wasn’t sure I heard it after all went quiet again for the next minute or two, so I started pounding again, and then I heard it again. Well fuck. I crouched down next to the door and tapped out the Morse Code for ‘Hi.’ Men of Letters should know something like that, shouldn’t they? I doubted Abaddon would respond with ‘Hi.’ I wondered what the hell she was doing in there. The whole reason she’d chased Henry was so she could get the key to get into the bunker, and here she was landing right where she’d wanted to be. 

I got an SOS back. 

_I know._ This was going to take forever if we had to tap everything out. Waiting a couple of seconds, I yelled, “Can you hear me?”

I heard tapping again. “S . . . h . . . u . . . t. Shut what? Shut the door?” I looked behind me at the garage door, but then my attention was drawn back to the door when more tapping came through. “U . . . p. Shut up?” I smiled. Guess that was a ‘yes,’ on being able to hear me then.

I thought about how to respond. “Uh.” Dot, dash, dot, dot . . . dot . . . dash. Pause. Dash, dash . . . dot. Pause. Dot, dot . . . dash, dot. “Let me in.”

Waiting with my hand poised to knock, all I got was, ‘N . . . o.’

I wasn’t going to start the ‘yes’, ‘no’ game. There wasn’t time for that. How about this? Dot, dot. Pause. Dash, dot, dash, dot . . . dot, dash . . . dash, dot. Pause. Dash, dot, dash . . . dot, dot . . . dot, dash, dot, dot . . . dot, dash, dot, dot. Pause. Dot, dot, dot, dot . . . dot . . . dot, dash, dot. “I can kill her.” 

_W . . . h . . . o_

_Who? What do you mean, who? The damn demon._ Dash, dot, dot . . . dot . . . dash, dash . . . dash, dash, dash . . . dash, dot. “Demon.”

I heard a voice come through saying, “She’s a demon,” and smiled briefly. 

“Yes, Dean, she’s a demon. Haven’t you ever seen one?”

“Not topside . . . The place went into lockdown when she showed up out of nowhere. Can’t override it.” What the hell happened there? He ended up in Hell without warning again or something else? Spell gone wrong. Wasn’t a crossroads deal anyway. He must’ve never run into Azazel or Meg either . . . weird. I couldn’t wait to get his story.

“You got something to write with?”

“Not on me.”

“Well go get it. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll give you an exorcism that will kill her.”

“You’re joking, right? There’s –“

“No, I’m not . . . Trust me.”

“You’re a voice on the other side of the door that knows my name.”

“Right now, I’m your best chance of getting out of there alive. She’s a Knight of Hell. You have to at least know –“

“The archangels killed them all.”

“No, they didn’t, but we don’t have time to waste debating it . . . Abaddon is –“

“She said her name was Josie.”

“That’s who she’s possessing, and yes, Josie was to be inducted into the Men of Letters on the night of the 1958 massacre, but the reason she survived isn’t because she jumped into the future. Henry pushed her through at the last second.”

“How do you know this?”

“I just spoke with him . . . in 1958. Somewhere in there, there should be a time spell that you can use to go anywhere in time. I used that . . . Come on, Dean . . . You have to know something isn’t right with her. You typed out SOS and are being all secretive and crawling around on the floor to talk to me through a damn door, so she doesn’t know . . . Use the instincts, I know you have, and get something to write with, so I can help you kill her. If you do, Josie will live. If not, then Josie will die, and so will you and whoever else is in there with you.”

“Sam?”

“If Sam’s in there, then yeah, Sam too.”

“He’s giving her a tour.”

“What? Why the hell is he giving her a tour?”

“Nothing else to do, and we’re all stuck in here until –“

“You know how to override this place being in lock down . . . You don’t want her getting out, or you would have. You know getting in there was the entire reason she killed the Men of Letters in 1958, right?”

“Sam thought –“

“You didn’t test her. That’s the first thing you should’ve done if she showed up out of nowhere. Did you already know? Did your grandfather tell you –“

“All right, he said to expect this some day . . . Didn’t say to expect you.”

“You’re a freaking lying, liar . . . I knew you weren't that incompetent. Is Sam trying to trap her in your holding cell? She’s too smart for that . . . You’re going to need the exorcism I want to give you.”

“Why should I –“

“Because my life depends on it, and I’m trusting you to do the right thing.”

“Okay . . . How will I know if it's –“

“Working? Well, if you start the exorcism, she’ll freeze, and it’ll confirm she’s possessed. Finish the rest of the exorcism without stopping, even if there’s flashing and flickering, and you can save Josie’s life . . . maybe the lives of everyone on the planet.”

All was quiet for about 2 minutes, and then I heard him on the other side of the door again. “Ready . . . give it to me.”

I gave him the whole thing, and he read through it. Sounded perfect. “You got this, Dean?” 

“Yeah, I mean . . . okay, so I lied . . . again. I have seen a demon. Not sure if you’ve heard of Lilith, but –“

“The first demon? I know her well. You met her?”

“Trapped her with a devil’s trap bullet . . . had to do something to –“

“Stop Lucifer from being released without killing her, because she was the final seal.”

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Long story . . . go do your thing, and, uh . . . if I’m not here when you’re done. It was good to –“

“Nah, I wanna talk to you. You said you weren't going anywhere.”

“Go save your brother Dean. Hurry.”

“You'll be here when I get back though, right?“

“If it means you'll do this, I will. You can interrogate me all you want. Please . . . You have 30 seconds to find her and finish it or Sam is dead.” I heard him leave and rested my forehead against the door to calm myself. I needed to be at the top of my game to buy him those 30 seconds. “Hello, Amara.” Standing, I turned to face her, not really sure what to expect. 


	107. Tired

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This Dean is from the current universe and has been raised as more of a Men of Letters than a hunter.

“Hello, Beth. We didn’t get to talk last night.” 

Watching Amara, I kept my back to the door. She could snap her fingers and destroy me. She could do that from anywhere, and it’s not like I could stop her, but I felt better having something behind me anyway. Force of habit, I guess. “No, I suppose not. I guess face-to-face is better than long distance, isn’t it?” 

“That’s not why you cut our conversation short. You’re afraid of me.”

“Not afraid . . . concerned about your plans for God’s creation.”

Looking at my chest, she said, “Your soul is different than others.”

“It’s been through a lot.”

She nodded. “I can see that . . . beyond the light, there was much damage . . . pain, suffering . . . Why did this happen?”

“The short answer? Greed . . . Raphael wanted to take over your brother's position in the universe. I fit into his plans. He tore out half my soul the day I was born, turned it into a monster, and kept me in Heaven to hide what he did and so he could kill my monster-half anytime he wanted by killing me . . . And pleasure . . . for those who were given free reign to torture me . . . And stubbornness . . . on my part, because I refused to let them defeat me.”

“And my brother knew about this?”

 _Come on Men of Letters, Dean._ “I suppose he did.”

“And he let it happen?”

“He did.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I have theories, but I can’t really say that any of them are right. He doesn’t really get involved. He kind of set the ball rolling and got out of its way.”

“And you worship him?”

“No . . . In fact, I think I call him an asshole almost every day.”

“If I relieved you of your suffering, would you worship me?” 

_What?_ “Honestly, no . . . My suffering is what makes me who I am . . . and if you did something like that, I’d be indebted to you the way I am him.”

“How are you indebted to him?”

“I met him, you know.”

“I do. You’re the only one I’ve met who has. That’s why I’m here. When I spoke to Dean last night, he didn’t want me to know about you, but I found you anyway . . . I recognized the Mark. I know that the Chuck who met me was not my brother. How are you indebted to him?”

“It’s hard to explain. I guess I didn’t like angels. They’re the ones who did this to me, and who’s more powerful than angels? God . . . I had to get out of where I was being imprisoned, but the only way to do that was to set up a meeting with him . . . and he gave me what I wanted.”

“Just like that?”

I smiled briefly. “No, and you know he didn’t . . . I had to make it worth his while.”

“Was your suffering not worthwhile on its own?”

“Maybe, but I don’t know. I doubt it. I didn’t think I was worth anything, so I felt like I had to offer him as much as I could.”

“Hence the Mark?”

“I knew a way to kill him, and I told him I would protect him from that happening.”

“You protect God?” I nodded, and she gave me an unsure smile. “From me?”

“No. From what Raphael had planned. See, there were 10 tablets and if all 10 are put together, they spell out how to take God’s power from him. If that happened, he would die along with all that he’s created, and the person who got his power would take over and be responsible for creating his own universe.”

“Well, then he played you for a fool, because that isn’t possible.” 

“It is . . . He knew some day that you would be released and there might be a need for him to hand his power over to someone else when you killed him, so that reality and you wouldn’t be destroyed. It was supposed to be a good thing in the event all was lost, but as I said, greed made others think it was their power for the taking.”

“And he wanted you to take this power?”

“No.”

“Who –“

She disappeared, and I waited a few seconds before crouching down to bury my face in the crook of my arm. Taking slow, deep breaths to try and work through my anxiety, I stayed like that even after the door behind me opened. “Thanks . . . You don’t have to knock me out or do some weird Men of Letters mumbo jumbo that’s isn’t any different than what witches do, but that somehow makes you think you’re better than them . . . I’ll come answer your questions now . . . peacefully . . . if you let me stand.” Putting my hands up to show whoever it was that I wasn’t armed, I waited until I got the all clear to stand and turned . . . “Maybe you’re more hunter than I thought . . . just a hunter in a suit. Colt 1911 . . . not bad, but it’s not my favorite.” Dean looked down at the gun he was holding on me, and I added, “Thanks for not knocking me out with it . . . If you could tell whoever is behind me not to do it either, I’d appreciate it. It’s the least you can do for leaving me hanging so long while you trapped Abaddon, took this place off of lock down, and then had said person sneak out the front . . . before you killed Abaddon. 30 seconds means 30 seconds, not 3 minutes.”

“How do you –“

“Whoever it was, isn’t Sam, so I’m guessing . . . Who the hell knows? This is a messed up universe . . . Anyway, whoever it is was around the corner of the garage for at least a minute before you killed Abaddon, and then that person waited until you opened the door to move into the garage, so I couldn’t leave. Blonde hair . . . I’m thinking Jo if Lucifer didn’t get out here . . . Can we be civil about this? I’m just really tired.”

Dean looked behind me and shook his head before looking back down at me. “What’s your name?”

“Beth.”

“Beth . . . “

“Foley.”

“Why didn’t you run when I left to deal with Abaddon?”

“I was talking to God’s sister, Amara . . . She’s why you needed to kill Abaddon. Killing her reset things, so it’s like Amara never got out of her cage. She wants to destroy her brother’s –“

\---------------------

I woke up to a splitting headache, went to touch the back of my head and found that I was cuffed . . . to a table in front of me. Fair enough, I guess? I barely registered the Dean in front of me when I looked up before put my forehead back on the table. “Go away. I’m sick of your face.”

“You want ice for that?”

“I don’t care. Do whatever you want. It’s what you people do anyway.”

“You people?”

“Winchesters and hunters in general.”

“We’re not hunters.”

“The Men of Letters used to run elite hunters out of here, and now you’re all that's left, so you have to do both, right?” I waited for his response and finally just said, “Some ice would be good . . . but I’m not moving, so you can put it where it’s supposed to be.”

“Okay, Veronica . . . let me know if it’s the right spot, so–“

“Told you I was in 1958 just before I got here. I had to fit in . . . look the part. I got an Archie comic book and did what I could . . . move it a little to the left . . . anyway . . . no, my left . . . and down towards the base of . . . there. Anyway . . . that’s why I look like Veronica. I always liked her better for some reason. Besides, I don’t do blonde.”

“You wanna tell me what you were saying about God’s sister?”

“Why? You got a guillotine above me ready to cut through my neck if I do?” 

“Yeah, it’s what the ice is for . . . stop it from taking your head off before I get any answers.” When I didn’t say anything, he sighed. “I didn’t know she –“

“I know . . . I have a Mark God put on my soul that makes people want to kill me. If I do something they don’t like, I generally get the shit kicked out of me when they wouldn’t normally do it to anyone else . . . I’m guessing I was right about it being Jo, and she didn’t like me calling her out on how bad of a job she did sneaking up on me.”

The ice bag started to slide off, and I let it, but a few seconds later, he put it right back where it’d been. “You thinking of picking the lock on the cuffs?”

“Already have. You shouldn't cuff people under the table. You should do it over the table."

"I know that. I didn't put them on you."

He seriously needed a better partner. He was worthy of better. "Anyway, I know you’ve got a gun under the table too, not that you need it. I told you before that I wasn’t going to do anything even if your partner is a dickhead.”

“Right. Because you’re tired.”

“I am, Dean . . . Talking to Amara took a lot out of me, but I was already treading water before that.”

“Right. Amara. God’s sister . . . You said killing Abaddon kept her from being released, so that’s why you wanted me to kill Abaddon?”

“Did you just flip open a notebook?”

“Maybe. Why?”

“Am I going into the archives here?”

“Maybe. Your exorcism is.”

“And Josie? Did she –“

“She’s being looked after.” Well, saving her was a plus. 

“She’s going to have a hard time adjusting to the present . . . but you can’t just send her back. I mean, you could, but you have no idea how that would change things. You may not be sitting here now, and nothing we did about Amara might have happened. This is the way it has to stay.”

“Kind of figured. How’d you know all that stuff about Lilith and Abaddon, and how’d you know Sam is my brother . . . or my name? I didn’t tell you either of those things.”

“You got a lot of ink in that pen?” 

“Yeah. You got a lot to say?”

“Probably go through a few pens.” 

I don’t know how long it was. Hours and hours later, anyway, right around the time I was telling him about when we went from the training mission back to our old life before we were asked to go on this mission, the door opened.

“You get her to crack yet? If not, I could get one of the –“

“I told you that you’re off the case, Jo . . . I’ve got this. Go back and keep an eye on Josie. Take her shopping or something. Show her what a credit card is.”

I mumbled, “Might want to tell her it’s like a Diners Club Card . . . but plastic. She’ll probably understand it better,” and there was silence before the door closed again. “Where were we?” I waited . . . and waited, and looked up. “Are you going through your notes?”

He smiled and looked down at his notebook. “You wanna take a break?” I shrugged and put my head back down on the table. “You want anything to eat or drink?”

“Are you making it?”

“I was just going to order . . . Yeah, what do you want?”

“Whatever you feel like making.” He got up, and started to leave, so I said, “You aren’t going to lock me back up?”

“Might lock the door.”

“I could get out, you know.”

“I’m guessing you could have already. You won’t.”

I shook my head slightly. “No, I won’t . . . Told you that you could interrogate me all you want, and it looks like God’s holding me to it. If I want to keep moving forward, it’s something I have to do.”

“Is that why you’re giving me every detail of your life?”

“You want me to stop? Just say you’re done, and I’ll disappear.”

“Not done yet . . . and I want to know more of the stuff you know. Think there’s a lot more than the exorcism you gave me . . . You got anything you want to ask me?”

“Lots of things.”

“Like what?”

“Like how you ended up in Hell . . . where’s Sam? Stuff like that . . . compare and contrast . . . the same as you’re doing, I guess . . . if you believe anything I’m saying and don’t just think I’m crazy.”

“You want a shower or a nap?” 

“Am I getting cranky?”

He laughed. “You weren’t until you got knocked out.”

“I’m not sure if I should sleep. Might have a concussion.”

“I could wake you up when I’m done with dinner or –“

“Okay.”

“Just like that?”

“Yeah, can I really have a shower first?”

“If you want.”

“Can I squeeze all of Jo’s shampoo down the drain?”

He laughed again. “Maybe wait on that until you’re ready to go.”

“I’m ready to go now.”

“No, you’re not . . . You need a break.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah, you got anyone you need to call, so they don’t come storming in here? It’s a pain in the ass to put the wards back up that you took down and counter-sigils for the one’s you used to counter the ones that were already there.”

“I’m the only one that could do that on our team . . . but yeah, I should probably find a way to contact them. Do Men of Letters have like . . . pigeon carriers?”

“What do you think we are?”

“Old fashioned and rooted in tradition.”

“Maybe we used to be . . . Been changing that.”

“Good job by the way.”

“On what?”

“On succeeding with Lilith where we failed. You’re doing a good job here, Dean.”


	108. A Solitary Man of Letters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is from the Dean's perspective in this universe (Raised as a Men of Letters more than a hunter).

“Look, I appreciate your enthusiasm, Jo, but I think she’s legit, and we’re not going to treat her like a prisoner. She’s just here doing a job, and she did it, and now she’s helping us fill in some blanks.”

“That’s what she wants you to think. I mean look at you. You’re cooking. You never cook, and she’s got you doing it for her. She’s got a room here now. She’s working some kind of magic –“

Dean laughed. “Jo, I know you’re new to all of this, but –“

“I’m not new. I grew up around hunters. I know –“

“Hearing stories second-hand isn’t the same as actually hunting. You did a good job today, just when I tell you to do something, do it. If I tell you not to do something, don’t do it. There’s a chain of command here, and if you want to be apart of this, you need to follow it . . . and when you’re first learning, you start thinking you see magic everywhere when it’s really not there. It can cause problems where there don’t need to be any. You need to trust my judgement. I know what I’m doing.”

He waited for her to acknowledge what he’d said, and then added, “There’s more left over if you want it,” before picking up the tray he’d made. Maybe it’d been a mistake bringing her into all of this. It’s just that this place got a little . . . quiet, and he needed to start training more people into this, because he needed help. There was too much out there that was wrong with the world. He couldn’t tackle it all himself, and he didn’t want this to be the last generation here. Now he was missing the quiet a little, but the training in new people thing was still a problem. Finding the right ones was hard.

When he got to Beth’s room, Dean wasn’t sure whether or not to flip on the light. Might not be a good idea if she did have a concussion. Light sensitivity might cause her more pain than she needed to be in, so he just left the light in the hall on and opened the door before knocking.

“Hey, you awake?” Nothing. Walking in, he set the tray down on the desk by the door. “Beth?” 

“Hmm?”

“I brought you something to eat.”

“Dean?”

“Yeah.”

“Am I in the bunker again?”

“Yeah.”

“Why is it every time I’m here, I don’t feel very good?”

“Uh, you got knocked out.”

He smiled when she amended what she’d said. “Why is it every time I’m here, I get knocked out?” 

“Bad luck?”

“Works for me . . . what’d you make? It smells amazing.”

He looked back at her tray. Wasn’t much. “Uh, I . . . just a spaghetti thing I made up, and I looked up some things to give people with concussions and might’ve made a smoothie.”

She laughed. “You made a smoothie?” 

“Yeah, and I might’ve added something to it to help you heal quicker.”

“Like magic stuff.”

“Maybe.”

“Does it taste like watermelon?”

He laughed. “Don’t think it has any flavor.”

“My Dad made up this drink for us in the training mission. It tasted like watermelon. Maybe he added the flavoring to it.” Probably. This stuff was the fastest way Dean knew to get someone back to normal again. 

He brought her tray over, and she sat up. After she took it, he turned to leave. “Are you having any?” Hadn’t planned on it. He had to catalogue some of the things she’d told him earlier along with everything that’d happened with Abaddon, and he needed to search the internet for anything new that’d happened today.

“Uh, there’s none left. I’ve got things to –“

“I’ll split it with you.” 

“Don’t want to eat alone?”

“Not really." Sighing, Dean pulled up a chair and grabbed his notepad before flipping it open. “You gonna act as my shrink, now?”

He laughed. “What?”

“It’s what you look like.”

“Uh, I was thinking that as long as I'm here, we could keep going on what you were talking about earlier.”

“Multi-tasking?” Yeah, he had to multi-task all the time to get anything done around here. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

“I think you were talking about the Alpha Vampire and his army. You wanna run by what happened when you got the pinball lightning again.”

“I had to make it look good, so it was a decent battle, but we were severely outnumbered. I didn’t want to lose any of the hunters, so I asked God to –“

“Is that a real thing? I mean, you keep talking about it, but –“

“You want me to prove it?” Dean had no doubt she would. 

“Go for it.” He didn’t know what she’d asked for specifically, but about 20 seconds later, a phone appeared in her hand out of thin air.

“Sure you’re not a witch?”

“Are you sure you’re not?” She kept saying that. The spells he did were totally different than the stuff witches did. For one, he didn’t sacrifice anyone or anything to do them. Sometimes he used the odd bit of soul power to get one going, like the blood spell that’d sent Abaddon here, but that was it, and it was his own soul, so who cared?

Flipping the phone open, she checked the numbers. “Mind if I call the people I’m with and tell them I’m okay?”

“Better than pigeon carrier.”

She smiled before hitting one on the speed dial. “Uh, hey . . . I’m okay. It’s done. I just have to . . . I know we’re still here, but I know she’s gone. I saw her disappear . . . Yeah, she showed up here. No, I’m okay. I promise. I just have to fill them in on what they need to know, so . . . To have them kill Abaddon, I needed to give them something, and an interview was it . . . I don’t know how long it’ll take. I want to go over things they might need, and maybe see if there’s anything new I can learn here that might be useful for New Orleans. Maybe they have things here that we don’t have in our bunker . . . Okay. Is everything there . . . yeah, put him on . . . Hey, Dean . . . No, I’m not on Mars . . . or my planet . . . I’m just at work. I’ll be back soon . . . Okay, good night.“

She looked at the phone before looking up at Dean. “Kid Dean. We explained this whole universe thing to him as it being like going to different planets.”

There were too many and instead of changing their names, they were just adding some kind of a descriptive word to differentiate them. That was bound to drive anyone crazy. It wasn’t natural. “It’s probably okay when you think there’s an end in sight, like the end of the mission, but what are you going to do when they all get to your universe?” 

“I don’t know. I think they’ll probably go out into the world and start killing monsters.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Take care of the camp and figure out something to do with New Orleans. That’s where I’m hoping you might be able to help. I know . . . well, you didn’t, but your predecessors brought down the Grand Coven. I could use anything you have on that.”

Yeah, they could do that tomorrow. She started to get up. “Wait, you mean now?”

“Well, yeah, I was just going to take this with us, so we could eat while we work. What else have we got to –“

“Thought you were taking a break.”

“I did.” 

A nap was a break? “When was the last time you watched a movie?”

“When we got Purgatory Dean . . . at the very start of the mission. I don’t know before that. Maybe when I saw something with Adam in my do-over training mission?”

“Well, then why don’t you do that?”

“Don’t think I’m supposed to leave my room now that you gave me one.”

Looking over his shoulder towards the door, Dean sighed. “Don’t worry about Jo. She’s just over-enthusiastic right now.”

“How long have you been training her?”

He smiled. “It’s that obvious?”

“Yeah, she was a lot more advanced in my universe.”

“I picked her up on a hunt in Wisconsin. Her Mom wouldn’t let her hunt, so she was striking out on her own, and if she was going to do it anyway, I thought she might as well do it right. She has potential.”

“She does . . . She’s a little older now, so she’ll probably be able to control her emotions better than when I knew her. Have you met Ellen yet?” 

“Not yet . . . they’re not exactly on speaking terms right now. Things were rocky before I met Jo. I guess they’re worse now.”

“I’ll watch a movie if you watch it with me.”

“I would, but I’ve got a lot of things to –“

“How long have you been running this single-handedly?”

Felt like forever. “A long time . . . since Dad . . . passed it onto me, I guess.”

“And Sam?”

“Last I heard, he was living it up in the suburbs of Sacramento.”

“Lawyer?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he with Jess?”

“Yeah, I caught you said she was supposed to die, but she didn’t . . . never had to deal with that Azazel you were talking about either.”

Beth sat forward in thought and said, “Maybe . . . maybe when the Azazel was supposed to kill your Dad and get your Mom to make a deal, your Dad could actually defend himself if he was raised as a Men of Letters?”

“Maybe . . . He never talked about a demon. My Mom died when I was a kid, but I don’t think there was anything supernatural about it. Just –“

“Her time . . . one of the threads of Fate that ties this universe to the others.”

“Sounds like it.”

“Why didn’t Sam come into the family business?” 

A lot of reasons. “He thought some of it was cool when we were kids, but he outgrew it. Dad encouraged him to do whatever he wanted.”

“And you? Why’d you decide to keep this going? I know you’re Dad left it to you, but why are you interested in it?”

“I’m good at it . . . all of it . . . the hunting, the spells, and the lore. It feels like a natural fit.”

“And without Sam, how was Lilith supposed to die in this universe?”

“I'm guessing there's more than one way to kill a demon. Just knew she was the final seal, and not to kill her, but we had to stop her from breaking seals sooner rather than later.”

“You and your Dad?”

“No, me and my grandpa. Dad was gone by then. My grandpa came out of retirement to help and died not long after that. Think me going to Hell did a number on him.”

“How’d you end up there?”

“I got on the wrong side of a witch. I’m fast enough to beat her now, I think, but I wasn’t then.”

“I like you, Dean.” 

He smiled briefly. “Not sick of my face anymore?”

“No, I shouldn’t have said that. I was irritable. I find you calming, and I mean that as a compliment . . . Since I’m thinking you don’t let yourself have much time off, I’ll let you decide what we watch and help you archive things from today. Tomorrow we can go over some of the things I might need, and I can tell you things I know, like how to cure a werewolf.” 

“A werewolf? Really?” He was more excited about that than he had been hearing about God’s sister or the Mark of Cain or the Mark Beth had for God, and he’d thought those were pretty cool. Actually kind of glad she’d had her head on the desk, so she hadn’t seen it. He was such a nerd sometimes when it came to lore. All he’d had for too long was the lore and going out to do investigations when he could. Hardly any time to make friends. Maybe that’s why it was so hard to find people to come here and train.


	109. Finding Good Help Is Hard These Days

“Hey, I was thinking.” I glanced up from the file on the table in front of me, and Dean continued, “You think maybe when you’re done with this mission, you might . . . See, I know you have a universe to put right, and I have this universe to keep right, but maybe you could come here for visits and help me get this up and running again the way it should be . . . I mean, if you think God would let you.”

“I’m not sure if God will let me. I’m not even sure how much longer I’m going to be able to talk to him. Maybe –“

“Maybe you’ll die, and the link will be severed?”

“Maybe.”

“Think you’ll get brought back to life?”

“I don’t know. Do people usually get brought back to life? No. And I won’t be of any further use, so -”

“I could use you . . . here. You’re exactly what I’m looking for and can’t seem to find as far as recruiting goes.”

That was really sweet. I’d love to help him with all of this. “So, you mean, I could come back as a vacation of sorts . . . a couple times of year?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Maybe there’s a spell you could use . . . there should be. There’s a spell for almost everything. Just have to find it. Unless, you think God’s the only one who has the power to jump universes.”

“Angels can . . . I know the other Deans we’ve picked up were all sent to a universe with no magic and no supernatural anything, because Cas had Balthazar send them there to hide them from Raphael, and I know my Dad visited other universes to see how I should be raised. Maybe I could ask him to bring me.”

“You think he would?”

I smiled at his poorly concealed hopeful enthusiasm. “As long as Chuck doesn’t stand in his way, and even if he does, my Dad will probably find a way to get around it if it’s something I really want. I could give you some names of hunters that might suit . . . they’re a little rough around the edges, but if they’re alive, maybe you could make it work.”

Sitting across from me, Dean pulled out his little notepad again and asked, “Who?”

I really liked him. He was totally different and yet the same. He’s the only Dean out of the ones I’d met, except for the 4-year old, that I hadn’t met as a kid, because his life’s course had changed before he was even born, which means when my Dad took me back to the trunk of the tree, this Dean hadn’t been there. He’d been relatively happy on his own branch. 

He was hopeful and a hard worker. He’d been to Hell and had presumably been broken if the seals had started breaking in this universe, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him. He didn’t have a lifetime of bad memories to go with it and could just about cope with what’d happened, I think. He was struggling to learn as much as he could about lore, because there was a lot of it out there for one person to try and find. He’d done a pretty good job of catching up to where he should be on experience, just maybe he didn’t know how to fight as well as the other Deans. He made up for it with knowledge and spells and things like that. 

I think he was extremely lonely but didn’t let himself have enough time to think about it. He didn’t loathe himself or feel guilty or think he couldn’t survive alone. In fact, I think he probably preferred solitude. His social skills weren’t up to the level you would typically expect for Dean Winchester, because I guess, he hadn’t had to learn how to fit in from school to school when he was growing up. He’d probably been an outcast in the same school his whole life, and I’d say now that his only real interactions with new people happened when he went out to investigate something supernatural. He was combining the hunters and Men of Letters together, but he was primarily a scholar. He was still brave, trying to save people, and a good man though.

“Yeah, Bobby Singer. If he’s still alive, he’d be good. He’s a hunter and gruff, but he loves lore, and he knows a lot of it. He’s fluent in Japanese. He runs a lot of different hunters from his house. They call him for help on hunts or for any new hunts he may have come across. They also call him for confirmation of cover stories, like let’s say a hunter is investigating a case and tells the cops that he or she is FBI. If the cops want to speak to their supervisor, the hunters hand over their supervisor’s details, and Bobby’s the one who answers the phone as their supervisor . . . He’s got a few phone lines set up, so when he answers, he knows what the authorities are calling to confirm, like FBI, Marshals, reporters . . . things like that.”

Dean scribbled away in his notepad and shook his head. “That’s kind of what I’m thinking about doing here . . . If he’s a hunter, do you think . . . Well, should I dress more like me, or . . . you?” 

He glanced up at me, and . . . the suit jacket was gone. He’d taken the tie off and had the first couple of buttons undone, so he was ‘dressed down’ while we were working in the archives. I, on the other hand, well, looking down at my clothes . . . I’d asked God to send my stuff here last night, so I was no longer dressed, like a comic book character from the 50s. I was wearing jeans, a plain black t-shirt with Violent Femmes written on it and a fitted blue and green flannel unbuttoned over the top. There were some amulets I had around my neck . . . and my watch. We were markedly difference in appearance.

“Uh, I could set up the introductions if you want.” 

“You’ll come with me?”

“Yeah, if you want . . . I’m still un-cluttering my mind while I can, and maybe I need another few days to decompress, so I don’t . . . self-destruct.”

“Who else do you think would be good?”

“Uh, well . . . how do you feel about summoning a demon and curing her? She’s abrasive, but she’s one of the best hunters I know in my universe now, and she knows a lot of lore about Hell and demons.”

Looking around the room, Dean said, “I think there’s something around here that –“

I smiled and said, “I know there is. That’s how I know how to do it . . . Which one do you want to try and recruit first?”

“Uh, we can try this Bobby first . . . Even if he doesn’t agree, I want to see what his set up looks like.”

“Well, he lives in a junk yard, so be prepared for that.”

“Anything else?”

“Follow my lead.”

\------------------

“Does this look right? It feels wrong.” 

I smiled at the sight of Dean fidgeting in his ‘hunter costume.’ He looked like every other Dean I’d ever met, just less confident and like he couldn’t wait to ditch the clothes for one of his suits. “Yeah, you look good. What do you wear when you hunt?”

Looking down, he shrugged. “I don’t know. Not a suit, but . . . not quite this either . . . Whatever’s comfortable and that I don’t mind getting destroyed, like a hoodie or something . . . just . . . seems like I’m posing now.”

“You look the part . . . almost. Here.” I reached over from the driver’s seat and messed up his hair, so it wasn’t all brushed over with a neat part along the side. 

He looked even more uncertain about his appearance now. “Are you sure this is . . . It’s not going to give off the right impression . . . He isn’t going to respect me.”

He was so endearing. “Well, you wear a suit to get through the door, so you can show people the right reasons to respect you, right? This is the same thing, it’s just that what you’re wearing now is like a suit to him . . . It stops him from slamming the door in your face and gives you a chance to show him why he should listen to what you have to say.”

His eyes searched my face for sincerity before he gave me a little nod. “Okay.”

“And just remember, not all hunters are good, so don’t go looking for more without Bobby’s help. You were lucky with Jo.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“I know. But even the street smart versions of you have been fooled by the odd bad news hunter. Not for long, but still.”

“You don’t think I have street smarts?”

I answered by simply giving him a smile before getting out of my side of the car and walking towards Bobby’s front door. The place was still standing, so that was a good sign. I guess the Cas from this universe only hung around long enough for some moderate help with the seals, so he hadn’t formed as much of an attachment to this Dean, because they hadn’t fought against Lucifer and the Apocalypse together. Michael was still around, and Raphael didn’t appear to be looking for a way to get the Apocalypse back on track . . . or at least not that this Dean had noticed, but I think the fact that Lucifer never got out of his cage meant that maybe that could still be a possibility some day . . . at least to the angels, so they were still waiting for their great war, or maybe Raphael was. Michael was probably okay with not having to kill Lucifer. 

Anyway, all of that meant that Cas hadn’t done whatever he needed to do to stop Raphael from getting the Apocalypse back on track, which meant he hadn’t gotten the Purgatory souls and hadn’t released the Leviathan. Bobby wasn’t dead . . . now we just needed to see if he was still a hunter in this universe. He became one before he met John, so I was assuming he was. I guess we’d just have to see.


	110. Passing Tests

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is from the Dean's perspective in this universe (Raised as a Men of Letters more than a hunter).

“Hi. Bobby Singer? My name is Beth Foley, and this is Dean Winchester . . . We were wondering if you might have some time to help us with a hunt we have. We think we’re dealing with an okami in Idaho. It keeps hitting truck stops. Think it’s been active for a while. The last I saw, it was in Virginia a couple of years ago, and then it disappeared before I could do anything about it. I know it’s unconventional to stop by a hunter’s house uninvited, but I hear you’re an expert on these things, and since we’re on our way to Idaho, I thought maybe we could stop by and get your thoughts on it . . . See what you think about some bamboo bolts I had made for my crossbow. I had them blessed by a Shinto priest. It’s just I can’t throw a knife to save my life and thought maybe these might work . . . We’ll do any tests you want to confirm we’re human.”

Dean looked down at the woman beside him. Her entire demeanor had changed from studious, frazzled, funny, and kind to . . . confident. She exuded the feel of leadership . . . and yet she still came across as guarded and casual and a little naive, but it was a naivety and friendliness she was using to her advantage, so she could get Bobby to think of her as less of a threat. There were shades of the real her in there mixed in with all of it, and there wasn't anything calculated about it. This was a show she put on for other people so often that it wasn't even second nature anymore. It was first nature, because she wasn't really allowed to drop it. It's how people in her universe and on her team needed to see her. Maybe the woman she was right now was who she had to be all the time, but maybe he'd been seeing the real her the last couple of days. He couldn't say for sure, but he thought the one he'd gotten to know was the real her. He wanted to find out.

And how did she know Bobby was a hunter? He looked like an alcoholic and maybe like he lived here alone. He was a walking stereotype of a junkyard owner, complete with a junkyard dog and all. This guy was just going to think they were crazy and slam the door -

“Gonna need you to drink this.” The man offered Beth a beer, and she drank about half of it before handing it to Dean. Drink in the middle of an investigation? It wasn’t even 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

Leaning into his shoulder, Beth said, “It’s holy water. He wants to see if we’re possessed.” 

Okay. Drinking the rest, Dean handed it back to Bobby, and Bobby produced a silver knife. Taking it Beth said, “I don’t cut myself, or I’d have scars all up and down my arms, but . . . here. If I touch it to my skin, and it doesn’t burn, does that work for you?” Bobby appraised her from under the bill of his hat and gave her a nod, so that’s what she did before handing the knife to Dean. He did the same thing she’d done, and that seemed to work for Bobby.

Opening the door a little wider, Bobby said, “Come on in . . . let’s see –“ Beth stepped forward first, and without having to look, brought her hand up to stop Bobby from stabbing her in the shoulder with another kind of knife. She had good reflexes. 

Taking the knife, she laid it across her forearm and said, “Iron doesn’t do anything either," before handing the knife to Dean behind her back, so he could do the same. “You have anything specific you want to do for vamps? I’m not putting some dead person’s blood in my arm . . . How about we stand outside and stare at the sun?” 

That would blind them, wouldn’t it, or at least it would for a few seconds, and that’s all this man would need to shoot them. Instead of taking her seriously, the man chuckled at her smart aleck comment and nodded his head towards the den. “Well, come on in, then. Let me get a look at these Shinto blessed arrows you’ve got. Haven’t heard anything on the wire about anything going on in Idaho, but we could have a look.”

Pulling out three glasses and a bottle of whiskey, Bobby sat across from them on the couch and poured all three of them a glass. Dean looked at his. Beth took hers and drank a couple of shots worth, so maybe he should do the same. Maybe it was another test. Drinking the first sip, he made a face and breathed in through his teeth before awkwardly laughing and taking another sip, so he didn’t appear rude. Hadn’t really been expecting the real thing.

Beth diverted Bobby’s attention away from Dean by reaching into her weapons bag and pulling out a quiver. “You got a crossbow those –“ She pulled out a small pistol crossbow to go with it and put it on the table next to the arrows. Bobby took an arrow and examined it before seeing if it’d fit her crossbow. “You carve these yourself?”

“Yeah.”

Glancing at Beth, Bobby said, “These ain’t half bad . . . and you said you got them blessed?” She nodded, and Bobby examined them a little further. “Might just work . . . thinkin’ you know they do already. Wanted to see if I really knew my stuff?” When she smiled, Bobby laughed and said, “Let’s see if we can find your okami in Idaho,” before he got up to go start making calls.

Leaning into her shoulder, Dean whispered, “Is he going to find anything, or are we going to have a problem?”

“Hope its okay that I used your laptop. I checked it out before we left the bunker. There is a hunt in Idaho.”

“How’d you know my password?” She gave him a look, like he should know, so he said, “It’s something one of the other Deans have used.” Her smile told him to try again,and he relaxed a little before saying, “You listened in on what I was thinking when I typed it in, right?” That smile let him know he got it right. “How long until we give him the pitch?” If Bobby really was a hunter and knew the right people or hunters to call in Idaho to get verification of a hunt, then regardless of whether or not he was an alcoholic, junkyard owner, Dean wanted his expertise for his team.

“Until after we get back from the hunt, and he sees we’re still alive. I brought a few things from your bunker that he might find interesting too . . . and we’ll take it from there.”

“Wait, we’re actually doing the hunt?”

“Well, yeah, we need to stop the okami from killing anymore people, and like I said, you just got in the door. He needs to see that you’re capable, so he’ll listen to what you have to say when we come back.”

“So, is he coming with us?”

“Doubt it. He’s busy here, but after you give him your pitch, maybe there will be a hunt he’ll want us to do . . . either with him or to help someone he knows. He’ll know then how you do, and then you might be able to convince him to come down and visit the bunker . . . if it doesn’t take a few more hunts before that.”

“Are you going to stay for all of that? Thought you were only staying for a few days.” 

“Are you done interviewing me for information?”

No. He gave her a subtle shake of his head. He could use her help as long as she was willing to give it to him. “Just let me know when you’re ready to –“

“I was ready to go as soon as you were done killing Abaddon.”

Maybe she’d been ready to go because she had to be ready to go at any time without any warning, but that didn’t mean she didn’t need a break from it. “If you help me get Bobby on board and Meg, then I can handle the rest . . . until you come back for your next vacation.”

Dean’s attention was pulled away from her when Bobby came back into the room saying, “Sounds like you might be right about the trucker thing . . . Haven’t been more than a couple that are gone, but if it looks to you like it's what you were hunting a few years ago . . . probably the same thing. Has a type, I’m guessing, if you think it’s an okami.”

Taking a deep breath, Beth said, “Yeah . . . it goes for lone male truckers. Goes for the hearts, but doesn’t follow the lunar cycle. I saw some of the bodies, so I know it’s not a skinwalker . . . doesn’t look like a dog attack. It’s strong and fast. As long as the truckers don’t put up a fight, it kills them relatively fast, but if they do fight back by shooting at it or something, it makes a mess out of them.” 

If Dean had to guess, he’d say that last look from Bobby meant she’d passed the final test. Beth must have thought so too. Standing up, Beth said, “Is it okay if we stop by here on the way back? Being out there alone and cut off from civilization isn’t really the way we want to hunt anymore. It’d be good to be a part of a network of some kind, but one we can trust. There are a lot of hunters out there that are just as dangerous as the things we hunt.”

Dean held he breath while he stood to see what Bobby said, and then Bobby answered, “Yeah, all right . . . stop by when you’re done, and I’ll see what I can dig up for you.”

\------------------

“Okay, you stay here. Stay hidden. I’ll –“

“Just because I’m not a hunter, doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Beth bit her bottom lip briefly before saying, “I know, but I don’t want you to hide, because I don’t think you know what you’re doing. I want you to hide, because I don’t want it to know where you are. I’m going to chase it your way. I was thinking that you probably know a way to trap it, and then we can kill it.”

“Yeah, okay.” She turned to leave, and he said, “Wait, one of these killed you, right?”

Without stopping, Beth answered, “No, water filling my lungs killed me . . . and it wasn’t this one. I killed this one . . . with Jo’s help.”

Turning to take in his surroundings, Dean caught sight of a tree directly opposite the tree behind him. It was about 20-25 feet away. That should work. Pulling his pocket knife out, he turned to carve the right glyph into the tree behind him, and then went to the tree 20 feet away and carved the same glyph into it. He had to eyeball it, but he was pretty sure it lined up with the one he’d carved into the other tree. 

Not being sure which way Beth would come, Dean went back to the first tree and thought maybe he should do this in a few different directions. When he was done, the trap was set up in all 4 directions and radiated out away from the tree where Beth had left him, so no matter which way she chased the okami, Dean should be able to trap it . . . as long as she chased it back by where she’d left him. Now all he had to do was hide and wait . . . and wait . . . and wait. After a while, he wasn’t sure if she’d just decided to kill it by herself or not. The thought never once entered his head that she might be in trouble. He just knew she'd be okay.

Maybe 30 minutes after he’d decided that she must've killed it without him, he heard movement coming through his trees to the left and got into position. Just had to time this right. Slicing his hand, he held it over the sigil and realized almost too late, that Beth was in the lead and the okami was chasing her. The last thing she needed was for Dean to trap her, so he pulled his hand back and waited the extra second or two for her to get past before pressing his bloody palm over the sigil. As soon as he did, the okami went flying across the woods and slammed into the opposite tree, and Dean grinned at the look on Beth’s face when she stopped running and looked back at the empty space behind her where the okami should’ve been. “Told you I know what I’m doing.”

Looking at the okami, Beth said, “I knew you’d know something cool we could use. Does that work on everything or just certain monsters.”

“Uh, everything . . . even humans.”

“Good to know, uh . . . you want to finish it, or do you want me to do it. Should only take 3 more.”

“You can.” Trapping it had been his job, and he’d done that. He wanted to see if she’d – Looked like she would. She just lifted her crossbow and shot in the chest, like it was nothing, before reloading and doing it 2 more times. Walking up to it now that it looked like it was dead, Beth retrieved her arrows, pulled a knife out of her wrist sheath and stabbed it a few more times. “Isn’t that overkill?”

“Overkill or making sure it’s dead? 7 is a lot, and maybe in the heat of a fight, you miscount how many you’ve done.” 

He guessed that made sense. Dean noticed she had a limp when she walked back over to him. “You’re hurt. Did it –“

She shook her head before looking down at her leg. “Tripped over a log and landed on my face when I was chasing it. Had to make it look convincing, so the okami would start chasing me. It refused to go the way I wanted it to go, so I thought having it chase me would get around that.” Looking at the sigil behind Dean’s shoulder, Beth asked, “How do you break it? Seems kind of morbid to leave the body hanging up against a tree like that.” 

Yeah, it did. Taking his knife, Dean cut one of the lines on the sigil in the tree behind him, making the okami’s body drop from the tree it’d been pinned against. He guessed they still had to burn it to get rid of it now, but for the most part this hunt was over. When he turned to face Beth, he had to ask. “Did I pass your test? Seems like you hunters have a lot of tests.”

Smiling, Beth said, “You passed the moment Amara disappeared. Nobody who didn’t know what they were doing could’ve trapped and then killed Abaddon.”

That was good. She didn’t think he was incompetent, but there was more than one kind of test she could’ve been doing. “What about the test to see if you could trust me to be where you thought I’d be . . . I mean, you didn’t kill it, and you could have instead of sacrificing your ankle and face or whatever, but you didn’t, because you wanted it to come back here . . . where I was.”

Looking at the sigil behind him again, Beth said, “I really just wanted to see what new cool thing you came up with . . . that was worth it. Hey, do you think I could use it on Rogue? Maybe she’ll think it’s fun, and she does tend to run around a lot and get into things . . . This might stop her from doing that as much.”

Uh, probably could, but it wasn’t the best way to babysit if – He smiled when he got that she was messing with him. “Yeah . . . might want to buy her a football helmet first.”

Beth grinned at him playing along with her and said, “Yeah? I’ll get her a Bears helmet to go with her Bear’s sweatshirt . . . So, what do you do when you’re done with a hunt in this universe?”

Dean looked around the woods. “Get rid of the evidence, start driving home, and archive anything new when I get there . . . think I’ll add your bamboo arrows to the okami files.” She kept giving him all kinds of cool new things to add. Guess he should return the favor and give her everything he knew about witches if they were a problem in her universe . . . New Orleans . . . that was a lot of witches. “Hey, if you need help with New Orleans, maybe you could send your Dad for me. I might be able to take a couple of weeks off.”

“What like a vacation in a post-Apocalyptic universe, so you can help us take down a city run by witches?”

“Well, yeah . . . There’s probably more I know about them than I could ever show you in the time you have here. Might be easier if I was there and helped.”

“Quid pro quo? I help you get your Men and Letters up and running into a larger operation, and you help me with New Orleans?”

“Well, yeah, and I want to see the supernatural tracking computer you told me about. Maybe I could get something like that set up here . . . not sure how, but if I see how it’s set up, maybe I could figure it out.”

“Yeah, I’d love the help if my Dad can do that . . . In the meantime, we should get back to the motel and do something fun . . . don’t care what it is . . . movies, or drinking or cards or whatever you want, and then tomorrow we can go back to Bobby’s. You can take pictures of my weapons and catalogue them when we get back.”

That sounded good to him. He wondered what other kinds of weapons she had in her bag. There was so much to find out, and he felt like he was running out of time to learn it all . . . unless she could come back the way they were saying for a few weeks here and there. He hoped she could. They seemed to be on the same wavelength on a lot of this stuff, like she wanted to learn the stuff he knew, because she thought it was as cool as the stuff he thought she knew was. It was hard to find people on the same wavelength as him. He knew what she was doing was important, but . . . she should've been born in this universe, then the two of them could've worked together on building up the US chapter of the Men of Letters to what he knew it could be . . . better than what they had overseas. More modern, more hands on . . . using what they knew to save people instead of hoarding all the information for themselves. And maybe they could've used it to do what she was doing now in a better way . . . a way that didn't involve wearing her down as much or losing people the way she seemed to keep losing them.


	111. A Hunter's Interview

“Ellen, put the gun down. You’re the one who told Jo she could get out if she wanted to hunt, and guess what? She did it. You should be grateful Dean took her in and started training her, because she had no idea what she was doing and would probably be dead by now if it weren't for him.” I refused to move from my spot in front of Dean and looked towards, Bobby. “And you . . . Well, I’m just disappointed that Bobby Singer would go sticking his nose into other peoples’ business. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but that doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed. Shame too . . . I was really looking forward to showing you the Spear of Destiny, handcuffs that work on demons, and a gold knife that will kill banshees. Dean was going to tell you about the lore he has at the bunker. There’s more than you could possibly read in a lifetime. It covers everything from ogres to time spells to how to cure a demon.”

Bobby looked at my bags and said, “Spear of Destiny, huh?” like he didn’t believe me.

“If you tell her to take her gun off of Dean, I’ll show it to you. Might even show you my angel blade, but you’re not touching my weapons bag, so that’s the only way you’ll be able to see anything I brought. She can shoot him almost as fast if she’s pointing it at the floor instead of at him . . . I’m giving you both the chance to solve this peacefully before I have to stop playing nice.”

Ellen cocked her rifle, and I looked at her. “Relax, Ellen, if I wanted you dead, you would be already . . . God, would both of you sit down?”

They both immediately landed on their asses, and I pulled my handgun on Ellen before she could pick her gun back up. She froze, and I said, “Dean, open my bag and grab the gold blade, Spear of Destiny, and the handcuffs. Put them on the end table nearest Bobby, and step back behind me, so Bobby can get a look at them.”

“I wasn't really planning on trading anything from our collection with him to get his help.”

I smiled briefly. “This is the only time he’s going to get to see them . . . unless he wants to see them in Kansas when he comes to find out how you operate and maybe join forces with you.”

“Don’t know what the hell makes you think –“

I cut Bobby off. “May I remind you that you two pulled guns on us first? I realize that this is your house, but you turned this into the situation it is now . . . and God made you sit on your ass, so shut up and stay there. Dean, show him. Guess you could call this a hunter’s interview.”

I felt the pressure of his chest leave my back as he crouched down to unzip the weapons bag at my feet. Keeping my attention on Bobby and Ellen as he came around from behind me, I made sure he had free-passage to the middle point in the room, so he could deposit the items on the table nearest Bobby and then back towards me to return where he’d been. Nodding towards the items, I glanced in Bobby’s direction and said, “Have a look.”

“Probably cursed.”

“Dean just touched them with his bare hands.”

“He’s the one that probably made ‘em cursed.”

“You know as well as I do, that doesn’t make a difference on curses.”

Bobby sighed and got up to his knees to have a look. He picked up the handcuffs first before inspecting them a little closer. Looking at Dean, he said, “Devil’s traps on a set of handcuffs . . . You think of this?”

“My organization did . . . You can put devil’s traps on bullets too and they work for trapping demons anywhere. You just have to make sure the bullet stays in the body, but the handcuffs are easier on the person being possessed if you want to interrogate the demon. The cuffs are just harder to get on a demons wrists than shooting a demon is, so it's a trade off safety to you or safety to the victim . . . I know an exorcism that will the kill demons too. It’ll leave the person they’re possessing alive . . . the exorcism even works if they’re not in a body, or if they are in a body, but there’s a binding sigil on them.” 

My eyes stayed on Ellen, but I was really watching Bobby as he reached for the gold dagger, saying, “Yeah? Where’d you get that? Ain’t never heard of an exorcism that can do that.”

“Beth told me the exorcism. My grandfather and I came up with the bullet idea.”

“What’d you use it on?”

“Lilith . . . the first demon. She was out and –“

Bobby looked up at him. “Breaking seals, trying to bring on the Apocalypse, but then she just disappeared. You’re the reason she did?”

Dean nodded, and Bobby went from looking like was thinking about throwing the gold dagger at me to looking down at it, like he was interested in what Dean had to say. “And this’ll –“

“Bobby Singer, don’t tell me you’re fallin’ for –“

Bobby gave Ellen a look. “Don’t hurt to hear ‘em out. Besides, I’m assumin’ your daughter’s got some common sense if she’s your daughter . . . wouldn’t go runnin’ off with the type of man that would kill her for the next thing that came along.”

Dean was in a rush to clarify that. “I’m Jo's mentor. That’s all.”

Bobby threw her a look and said, “See,” before he rolled his eyes and muttered, “Women.” Looking back up at Dean, Bobby said, “Now, this’ll kill a banshee? That right?” 

“Uh, yeah, but banshees are hard to keep in one place for long. I know a sigil that’ll trap one. It’ll trap anything. I used it on the okami we hunted the other night.”

Bobby nodded in thought while he examined the gold dagger, and then put it back before reaching for the Spear of Destiny. “And this? You’re telling me this is –“

Dean quickly said, “Yeah, it’s the spear that pierced Jesus’s side . . . It’s one of our relics.”

“How’d you get your hands on it.”

“The Men of Letters have been around for a long time. It went from the Knights Templar into the hands of our Italian Chapter of the Men of Letters and from there to the French Chapter and then the British Chapter, and they were some of the first settlers here . . . well, successful settlers.” 

“There many of you left?”

“Uh, well . . . in Europe, yeah . . . Here . . . I’m it. See, it’s passed down through families, so I’m a legacy, but I’m the last one. In 1958, a demon killed everyone in the US Chapter except for my grandfather and one of his elders. My grandfather passed it onto my Dad, and my Dad passed it onto me. In the past, the elite hunters were organized out of our base. The Men of Letters studied up on lore and archived everything the hunters would need . . . kind of like what you’re doing here . . . but since I’m it, I’ve been doing both . . . hunting and the Men of Letters thing, and uh, it’s why I’m training Jo. I need help. She didn’t know what she was doing, and I thought if she was going to hunt anyway, she might as well learn how to do it the right way . . . I thought you might be able to help too . . . and maybe show me the right kinds of hunters to work with. I’m a little out of the loop on things like that.”

Bobby looked at me and said, “Got a hunter through and through standin' right in front of you from what I can see. You need more than that?”

“I’d love to keep her, but she’s, uh . . . she’s visiting, and you know how big this country is. You know how bad the problem is. We could work together . . . if you just want to come down and see the place . . . it’s warded against any kind of evil there is, and there’s only one key, so you won’t be able to get in without me, but . . . I could show it to you, so you can see that I’m legit.”

Bobby sighed and sat back on heels before looking at me. “All right if I stand? Gettin’ too old to be doin’ this for long.” Looking over his shoulder at Ellen, he added, “Ellen’s gonna keep her rifle on her, but pointed down the way you asked, if that’s all right.”

“That’s fine.” 

Ellen got to her feet at the same time Bobby did, and Bobby looked at Dean again. “I know Beth’s a hunter, but if she can do spells, does that mean you employ witches too?”

Dean shook his head. “No, she really can get God to do things for her, and uh, I know a lot of sigils and spells, but I’m not a witch. The Men of Letters brought down the Grand Coven . . . With our spells you never have to sacrifice anything to get them to work. With witches, that’s the only way they can get most of their spells to work, and a lot of the stuff we use isn’t different to things I’m guessing hunters use for things, like tracking a demon or monster or summoning something . . . We just know more than most hunters probably do . . . That’s why I want the right hunters helping me, because I know I can help them be better than they already are, but I don’t want them using it for the wrong reasons either.”

Ellen finally decided to say something after having listened to everything. “You got my Jo doing this too?”

“Well, right now, I’m starting her out on target practice, and she’s good at that, and I’ve got her reading through lore, but . . . she’s not a fan of it . . . She wants to hunt. I don’t think she wants to do what I do.”

“Well, I want to see this place for myself.”

Seeing the opportunity that'd just presented itself, Dean seized on it. “Okay . . . if Bobby comes too. It's probably the only way he'll feel good about you coming, and you'll know you have back up even though you don't need it . . . And just so you know, a woman from that 1958 massacre I was talking about . . . she was supposed to be inducted into the Men of Letters the night that happened, but she was possessed by the demon that killed everybody else, and my grandfather pushed her through a time portal . . . She showed up a few days ago. Uh, the demon’s dead. I used that exorcism, but Josie’s still here, and Jo’s been babysitting her . . . trying to catch her up over the last 50 years, so she can adjust . . . maybe go easy on Jo around Josie. Might be too much stress.”

Bobby and Ellen shared a look, and Bobby snorted. “What? You think I’ve got nothin’ better to do than go chasin’ off after your daughter?”

Ellen threw her eyes to the Heavens and said, "Not after what you heard him just say about having my back you don't.

Looking back at Dean, Bobby tried to dampen Dean's expectations. “Not promising anything, but might be good to get a look at some of this lore you’re talkin’ about . . . see how it matches up with what I know.”

Breathing a sigh of relief Dean said, “Thanks, Bobby . . . I appreciate it. I’ll, uh . . . maybe I could use your help, while you’re there. There’s a demon, we want to try and cure too. I hear she’d be a good hunter and knows a lot of lore on demons and Hell.”

Maybe not the best time to say that, but his enthusiasm seemed to maybe be winning at least Bobby over. Ellen was another matter, but I’d keep an eye on her . . . and Bobby, just to be on the safe side. I was the one who brought them to Dean’s attention after all.


	112. Building A Chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is from the Dean's perspective in this universe (Raised as a Men of Letters more than a hunter).

Beth looked up at Dean, while he unlocked the door to the bunker. “Watch Bobby’s reaction when he walks in here.” 

At a glance, he'd say Bobby wasn't all that interested, just generally annoyed to be here. Pushing the door open, he let Bobby and Ellen through. Ellen was straight down the steps the second she saw Jo, but Bobby stood at the top of the stairs, looking a little awestruck. That had to be a good sign, didn’t it? Glancing at Beth, Dean returned her slight smile before pushing the door shut and saying, “Come on, Bobby, I’ll show you around. You guys can stay here tonight if you want. We have lots of room.”

Looking over his shoulder when he got to the bottom of the stairs, Dean waited as Bobby slowly walked down behind him. “When you say organization, you mean an organization . . . You’re the only one that’s been runnin’ this?”

“Yeah . . . I’ll show you where we keep our archives. They’re in a few rooms, and there are libraries too . . . There’s a shooting range downstairs and cars in the garage.” 

Leading the way, Dean gave him the tour and some history about the place. Bobby didn’t say a whole lot, but when Dean showed him the first room of archives and opened the nearest drawer, so Bobby could see the files, Bobby pulled one out and looked through it with a thoughtful shake of his head before finally saying, “All these filing cabinets are filled?”

“Yeah or close to it.”

“And you got more than this room.”

“Yeah, I’ll show you.”

Dean took him to all the other archive rooms and then showed Bobby where the films were stored before taking him to the libraries and studies. Through it all, Bobby was again silent until Dean got to the study Beth had told him to show Bobby, and Dean said, "Thought maybe this could be your study . . . when you want to come down to help . . . on weekends or whenever."

Looking around, Bobby said, “These Men of Letters must’ve had some money, huh?”

“Resources built up over time.”

“Your Granddad passed it to your Dad . . . neither one’s around anymore?”

“No, my Dad passed away a little over 6 years ago and my Grandfather did about 4. He came out of retirement to help with Lilith.”

“Got no other family?”

“I have a brother, but he’s not interested. He’s living his life as a lawyer in California.”

Bobby glanced over at him. “He visit?”

“Not really. Saw him at his wedding, but that was a few years ago.”

Shaking his head Bobby said, “You go out at all, or is it all this . . . work and no play.”

“I like the work. Without it I wouldn’t have . . . It’s what I have.”

“Think you and me have more in common than I thought, kid.”

Looking down at his clothes, Dean slumped a little. “Is it the suit? Beth said it was too early to start wearing it again.” 

He was a little surprised when Bobby laughed. “She told you to not to wear it?”

“She said what I wore when we met you and yesterday was like a suit to get in the door with you. Your first impression would’ve been to think I can’t do the job if I was dressed like this.”

Bobby looked at Dean’s clothes and shrugged. “Maybe to get you through the door, but if you’ve been doing it alone this long, you must be good at what you do. You wanna show me what you meant by curing a demon?”

Looking back over his shoulder towards the hall, Dean said, “Yeah, sure . . . It’s just back in the movie room. Beth and I found it before we left the other day.”

“Why’d you leave? Was it really to do that hunt in Idaho?”

“It was to ask for your help . . . here. I didn’t know she found the case in Idaho until she told you.”

“How’d you know about me, Dean? I’m thinkin’ you don’t run into too many hunters?”

“Beth.”

“And how’d she know?”

“She, uh . . . she knows you in another universe. That’s why she can’t stay . . . She’s on a top-secret mission from God. That’s why He listens to her. He just keeps sending her to different universes to change moments in time to stop something bad from happening down the line, but I think she needs a break, so I asked her to stick around and help me out.”

“Sounds crazy.”

Dean smiled. He’d never doubted her for a second, but he probably shouldn’t say that or Bobby would think he needed to keep more of an eye on her. She didn’t need that. She wasn’t a threat to anyone here. Yesterday had been . . . well, she’d taken control of the room to keep things from getting worse when they’d walked into an unexpected situation, but she hadn’t hurt anyone. “I know, but she’s not . . . In this line of work, you get used to the unbelievable, right?” 

Bobby threw him a look and shook his head before saying, “’Spose you’re right . . . You like her, huh?”

“Yeah, she’d fit right in here. Think I’ll miss her when she’s gone.”

“Well, does she have to go?”

“Her universe is in really bad shape, so it needs her.”

“Can you go with her?”

“I’m the last Men of Letters here . . . This is where I need to be, and she’s already got a lot of versions of me who have signed on to help her . . . I did offer to help her if we can figure out a way to get me to her after she goes.”

“If she’s got other versions of you, why does she need your help?”

“Cause they’re all hunters, and she needs someone who knows what to do with witches . . . I know hunters know how to kill witches, but getting around their curses and spells? That’s different.”

“You sure there’s not another reason you want to help her?”

“She’s helping me. You should see how much she’s given me in just half a week on lore she knows, and she introduced me to you.” Bobby shook his head again, but Dean wasn’t as clueless as Bobby thought he was. “She was with another me. They had a daughter, but he . . . I think the easiest way to explain it is that he died and was reincarnated as part of another one of the Dean’s, so she’s with him now . . . hoping that he’ll remember her, but he doesn’t.”

“They happy?”

“That’s why I think she needed a break. And her daughter’s on a different team than her, so she doesn’t know what’s happened to her. She does know her best friend was on another team and died . . . She’s not sure what happened with her Dad either, but she thinks he’s on a team with her daughter unless he’s alone.”

“Don’t sound like God’s playin’ fair.”

“I don’t think God knows what fair is. I think he’s doing what he has to do to save everyone else that he can.”

“Stakes are that big?”

“Yeah.”

“And the reason she’s here . . . You all stopped it from happening?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if it’s anything like what you did with Lilith, good job. That was one big mess that could’ve gotten a whole lot worse. Wasn’t sure whether or not to believe you had a hand in stopping it until I walked in here, but seein’ the facilities you have . . . people don’t know what they owe you for that one.”

“Don’t owe me anything. It was my responsibility to stop it.” He’s the reason it’d started, but he’d fixed it. Hearing how it could’ve gone from Beth, Dean was just relieved he had fixed it before too many lives had been lost. Some had been when some of the seals had broken, and he didn’t feel good about that, but he was trying to make up for that by keeping this bunker going and doing the best job he could . . . maybe for the first time in a long time, he felt like he was making progress on it.

“Well, all the same . . . you did a good job, Dean . . . wish I could tell your grandfather the same.” 

“I couldn’t have done it without him.” 

Growing up, he’d had his Dad and Sam, but he’d also had his Dad’s parents. His Grandmother had taken he and Sam when his Dad and Grandfather went out on a case, but out of all of them, his Grandfather had been more like Dean than anyone else in his family. His Grandfather had always been willing to take chances and bend the rules. His Grandfather had been the ideas man on a lot of things and had always encouraged Dean to do the same. In truth, it was probably because of him that Dean liked doing what he did as much as he did. His Grandfather had made it fun and exciting and made it seem important when Dean was a kid, and it was important. They were the invisible line of defense between normal, everyday people and the supernatural. He wouldn’t be who he was now or able to do what he had so far without his Grandfather.

\-----------

Dean glanced around the table at dinner. Josie was . . . well, she was pretty easy to talk to about most things, because she knew a lot about the Men of Letters, and it looked like she was a great hostess, so she was keeping the flow of conversation going and answering any questions Ellen had. Ellen . . . well, it looked like she was going to be un-enrolling Jo from the Men of Letters and taking Jo out hunting on her own. That was okay. At least they were hunters that Dean could call for a case if he had to sometime. He’d never had those. Bobby . . . it was still hard to get a good read on him, but Dean thought that maybe Bobby was inclined to help him, so if losing Jo meant he gained Bobby, Dean was okay with that trade off. 

Later, he stopped by Beth’s room. “Grabbed you something.” 

Looking at the tray, she got up to take it from him and said, “You didn’t have –“

“Thought you might be hungry.”

She looked past him. “Yeah, I –“

“Probably hard to go through hunters tests all the time when it’s the same hunters over and over again.”

She smiled before saying, “Yeah, it is.”

“And the hunters where you’re from they . . . “

“Are fine as long as we don’t give them a reason to doubt us . . . I don’t know what they’re going to do if I’m totally honest. We held onto their support when Sam and Dean came back years younger, because –“

“You orchestrated the battle in New England.”

“Yeah, with Sam dying and Dean not returning as himself again . . . I don’t know. I mean . . . my Sam was capable of truly great things . . . Terrifying but great. Even when he didn’t remember our old life, his soul had the experience it took to fight his way through Hell and back to get his brother . . . And I’m thinking the only thing that the other Dean Winchesters have done that’s comparable to living in our universe is making it through Purgatory, but they didn’t have to lead anyone there. They had to form alliances with Benny and then get Benny and Cas to the portal out, but leading hunters and what’s left of the human race . . . being seen as a true warrior, not just warrior, but someone carrying the hopes of everyone left on his shoulders . . . Finding ways to keep everyone fed and clothed and all the rest of it . . . I don’t know if they can just pick it up if they land in that kind of an environment as is. Dean had years of experience and put in the hard work to get where he was . . . It wasn’t overnight. And even if they try to step up and take his place, I don’t know if they can do it without stepping all over one another. I don’t even know what’ll happen if people choose different Deans as their favorite . . . are they going to start fighting over it? Is everything going to be fractured?”

“Think you’re forgetting about you.” 

Looking down, she shook her head. “No, I . . . I’m a sprinter, I’m not a marathon runner. I’m great for short distances, but long term . . . “

“What do you want to watch tonight?”

“What?”

“Your choice.”

“What about everyone –“ 

“They can figure out what to do with the rest of the night. You and me are gonna watch a movie . . . no shop talk.”


	113. Marshmallow Land

“You turned this into a sparring room?” Dean opened the door and shrugged. I thought he lived here alone. “Who do you spar against?”

“Uh . . . well, I used to spar with my Dad and Sam and was thinking of opening it back up for Jo.”

“And you want to spar with me?” 

“Well, yeah.”

If he was being serious, I’d have to make sure I didn’t hurt him . . . but then who knew what kinds of spells he could use on me. Maybe I was the one who needed to be extra-careful. It would be good to get some training in against that kind of thing before New Orleans. “Okay.” He flipped on the light, and it wasn’t what I was expecting. The walls were covered in . . . walking over to the one on my right to get a closer looked, I . . . well, that’s not what I was expecting. “Why are they covered in . . . thought they were styrofoam, but . . . are these marshmallows?” 

I looked over her shoulder at him, and Dean was painting some kind of a rune on the floor. “Might want to . . . probably better if you stand behind me in the doorway . . . Or maybe you should -” 

“If I help, does it make me immune? Like with the Horn of Gabriel, if you do the spell, you’re immune to the effects.” 

Looking up at me, he quickly said, “I don’t know what that is, but you’ll have to tell me when we’re done, and yeah, that’ll work.”

Yeah, I could do that. Crouching next to him, I asked, “What do I have to do?”

“Uh, cut your palm, like this.” He showed me by cutting his own hand, so, I got my lucky silver knife and did the same near the base of my fingers and not very deep, just enough to draw some blood. When I was done, he said, “Then just touch the rune at the same time I do.”

“Like an angel banishing sigil?”

“Uh . . . I want to know what one of those is too, but if the blood is what it takes to activate it, then yeah. It’s the same thing you have to do for that sigil I carved in the woods the other night.” 

“Yeah, okay.” He got up to close the door, and I waited until he came back to touch the rune at the same time he did. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and . . . what the hell? Hundreds of marshmallows lifted off the ground and stopped mid-air . . . It must be some kind of levitation sigil. Slowly standing in wonder, I exhaled, “Wow . . . that is probably the coolest thing I’ve helped do.” Looking down at him . . . well, he was watching to see what I thought about it. “Why did you –“

“You were talking in your sleep last night after the last movie was over. I couldn’t get a slide the size of a skyscraper or anything, but I thought this might work.”

If I did talk in my sleep, I’d only ever done that with my Dean. Or I think I only ever did that with my Dean. I hadn’t heard otherwise from anyone else. “I didn’t –“

“Yeah, you did . . . You wanted to go to a place with giant, floating, rainbow-colored marshmallows, and you said something about them being able to cushion the blow if you got thrown into one . . . you wanted slides too, so you could land on them, but I couldn’t get those . . . thought maybe there was something in there you needed, so I tried to make it happen.”

I smiled again before looking at the room. He’d cushioned the walls with as many marshmallows as he could find and made the others float to get it as close to what I’d said as possible? “And you want to spar?”

“Yeah.”

Poking one of the marshmallows, I realized that the things that were floating would move. I guess that if they weren’t stationary, they wouldn’t hurt us. “We get to fight in marshmallow land?”

“Yeah, if you want.”

Slipping my jacket off, I smiled. “I would love that . . . You’re not going to throw any of your Men of Letters mojo at me, are you? Could probably knock me out with a sleep spell with no problems. I don’t want to miss this.” 

“No, I know how to defend myself without it.”

He handed me some gauze he’d brought with him, so I wrapped my hand, and he did the same with his hand, while I said, “I bet you can if your Dad trained you . . . no weapons. That’ll make it fair.”

“Why? What kinds of –“

“My angel blade . . . for a long time, that’s all I’ve used to spar, but . . . think we should be pretty well matched if there aren’t any weapons, and you aren’t using your mojo on me. I haven’t just done normal sparring where I wasn’t training in . . . years, I think . . . since I was training Paige. I’ll help you clean all this up. It’s probably –“

“All we have to do is cut the glyphs I used to keep them up there. Shouldn’t be too hard. Just have to sweep everything up.”

“The same sigils you used the other night?”

“Uh, yeah, but a lot bigger.”

“Thank you, Dean . . . Don’t take me trying to kick your ass as a sign I’m not appreciative.”

\---------------

He landed on his back with a grunt, and I heard him think, _”No trying involved. She’s kicking my ass and has been the whole time."_

We’d been doing this for a while. Maybe he needed a break. “You’re holding back.”

“Maybe I was at the start, but I think this is as good as you’re gonna get out of me.”

But he wasn’t bad. He knew the right moves. He just needed to work on his agility. “What I’m getting is pretty good, but you can do better.”

“I’m not them. It’s not –“

“Ingrained in you? No, I suppose it’s not, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get better . . . with practice.”

“Yeah? Are you going to stick around and be my sparring partner?”

Crouching down over him, I shook my head. “No, you know I can’t. Meg on the other hand . . . or Bobby . . . they could, or you could stay the way you are and keep using your mind to get out of trouble. I’ve hobbled you by not letting you play up to your strengths . . . wanna try it with those?”

“You don’t mind?”

I smiled before taking one of the marshmallows and popping it into my mouth. “Nope.”

“Probably shouldn’t do that.”

“Why? Am I going to start floating away, like in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?”

“Uh, hadn’t thought of that. Was mostly thinking that it’d been on the floor.”

“I’ve been sneaking them in the whole time we’ve been in here, and now you tell me that?”

“Uh, -“

I laughed. “I’m kidding. I know they were on the floor. 3 second rule, right?”

“More like 30 minute rule. Took me a while to find you smoking on the roof.”

“I eat out of date cans of food on a pretty regular basis. Think I’ll survive.”

“Probably. Doesn’t mean you should have to survive that way though . . . at least not while you’re here.”

Offering him a hand, I said, “Come on. Let’s try again.”


	114. Think It Over

Uh . . . he’d done a lot better after she said he could use his Men of Letters training, but he hadn’t really expected her to reward him when they got back to her room. One second, he was telling her that he was going to make them lunch and the next her lips were pressed against his, not that he was complaining. A second later she realized what she was doing and took a step back. “I’m, uh . . . I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have –“

“I don’t care about the floor germs.”

She laughed awkwardly and said, “No, I mean –“

“I know what you meant. You’re already taken.” She nodded. “I don’t care about that either.”

“What?”

“I’m sure he likes you, but the guy you’re with is with you out of a sense of obligation. He promised you a lot of things when he was a demon, but that’s not why he feels obliged to be with you. He feels bad about killing your guy off, and yeah, that’s exactly what he did. He knew you could read his mind, so he lied to himself and you to hide it from you . . . but he was a demon, Beth. Of course he got your guy out of the way to get what he wanted. The only reason you aren’t dead too is because he twisted his provision so your guy’s soul fused with his . . . If you don’t believe that’s what happened after he got your entire life’s story while you were asleep, then you’re intentionally being more naïve than you are to avoid it. And I don’t blame you . . . if I had someone that meant that much to me, I’d probably do the same thing. 

Maybe since he’s been human, he did okay when it was just the two of you, but if he really meant the things he’s said, he’d let himself remember your guy’s life, so you could at least have part of that guy even if your guy is gone, but he can’t, because he feels too guilty about what he did to remember a guy he had God kill . . . and you know God does things like that, because he killed your other half for you as a part of his deal for you signing on for all of this before you really knew what you were doing. If it’s part of the same person or the same person, apparently, God doesn’t think it’s wrong.

And you’ve just picked up another guy like us who is latching onto you with everything he has, so he can avoid what his life turned into before he met you, but it’s sucking out what little motivation you had to keep moving forward to get this done. Half your family is dead, and the new people you’ve picked up aren’t making it any easier. Not even the kid . . . He’s relying on you to keep him happy until his parents get back, and none of them have thought once about what they’re going to do when they get to your home. Sure, they might have thoughts on what it’ll be like for them but they haven’t considered what it’s going to be like for you. So, no . . . I don’t care about them. I know you’ll feel guilty or whatever, because you have to live with them after you leave, but I don’t. If what you need is for me to be a friend, I’ll be that. If what you need is more, I’ll be that too, and nothing that happens here is anything they ever need to know about. It’s between you and me.”

Exhaling a sad laugh, Beth took another step back. “Wow, that’s . . . except for it being a kinda long speech, I think that’s the most you’ve sounded like them since I talked to you through the door.”

“Why? Because I’m angry? They all sound angry.”

Giving him a small smile, Beth said, “Yeah, maybe . . . and they tend to say the –“

“Right things? Yeah, with all their ‘street smarts’ I bet they do. But I meant what I said. And I’m sorry your guy is gone, because it sounds like he finally figured it out, and I’m sure the journey there was hard, but worth it . . . but the rest of them? They don’t know what to do with you any better than they’re going to know what to do when they find themselves in your universe. They’re using you to make themselves feel better . . . The only one being honest about it is the 4-year old.”

“You really think my Dean is gone? The new despondent Dean seems to think my Dean is the Mark of Cain Dean, it’s just that my Dean doesn’t want to remember his life with me, because –“

“Your Dean would never not want to remember you. I didn’t know him, but I know that much from what you’ve said. The new despondent Dean is saying what he thinks he would do, not what your Dean would.” He was kind of glad now that she’d gone into all the detail she had when she told him about her life, or he wouldn’t know the right things to say. They may not be what she wanted to hear, but if he didn’t say them, then she was going to keep letting them use her after she left here, and he didn’t want that.

“My Dean said if they merged into one that he’d be the stronger one . . . he’d just incorporate anyone new’s memories into his own, like he did the memories from our training mission . . . what if he’s not the stronger one? I can feel him there sometimes.”

“I know, but is that really him, or is that the guy with the Mark of Cain? How would you know the difference? They’re the same person, with different experiences, right?” She nodded briefly, so he added, “And maybe the struggle you feel him having is there because of the Mark and because of his guilt and maybe those memories of your Dean’s life are there, but like I said, as long as he feels guilty for killing your Dean so he could have you, he won’t let himself remember them.”

“He remembered some when he was taking me to the hospital.”

“Why was he taking you to the hospital?”

“He stabbed me.” 

Yeah, he didn’t know that. She’d left that out of her life story. “Your Dean wouldn’t have done that Mark or not . . . and I’m guessing the guy with the Mark’s guilt over doing that was enough to maybe override his guilt for killing your guy if it meant he could make you feel better, but he didn’t let it slip entirely.” 

“I kept saying he wasn’t my Dean. And he didn’t want to be himself anymore. He wanted to be my Dean.”

In the short term, that was probably the best solution to keep her alive, but in the long term? Dean was guessing that things like that kept confusing her. “Where’d he stab you?”

She pointed to her torso and answered, “Here. You’re magical concussion fixer healed it . . . Thank you.”

“It wasn’t hard to make. I just -”

“Thank you for respecting my Dean . . . for saying nice things about him. He got a lot more right than he did wrong . . . I can’t let him go though.”

“You don’t have to let him go . . . But you do you have to admit he’s gone, so you can tell the people when you get home that he is . . . It’s the only way to get around what you were saying last night about how they’re going to be looking for your Dean and your Sam. If they know not to expect them, it’ll be hard, but they won’t expect the other guys who look like your Dean to be him . . . and you have to do the same with your daughter when you see her again . . . she can’t keep expecting him to walk through the door. “

Tearing up, she said, “I don’t think I can do that.”

“Not now, but that’s why you’re here, right? You needed some space and to un-clutter your mind . . . You already know everything I’ve said. You just needed to hear it from a voice you trust, I think . . . and one that doesn’t want anything from you.”

“Except all the sigils and lore I know.”

Smiling briefly, Dean said, “Rather have you stay and help get this going the way I know you could, but I know you have to go, so I’ll take what I can get for as long as I have you here.”

“And if I come back on vacation.”

“Yeah, but I think we both know –“ Her lips where on his again, but more than passionate, she felt gentle and vulnerable and sweet. He slid his hand through the hair at the side of her head before he pulled back. He understood more about this soul mate thing than probably even she did. “You should think it over. We shouldn’t –“

“I thought you said you’d be more if I wanted more.”

“I will . . . I want to . . . you have no idea –“

She kissed him again, and he forced himself to pull away after 30 seconds. “But maybe I shouldn’t have said that . . . I don’t want to make things worse –“

“I thought you said you didn’t care.”

“I don’t care about them. I care about you, and I don’t want you to regret –“

Saying, “I won’t,” she kissed him again, and he went along with it for a minute, might’ve even closed the door behind him before he got it together again.

“You’re leaving.”

“I know.”

“I’m staying.”

“I know.”

“It’ll be harder for you when you go if –“

“I know.”

The next kiss she gave him almost got him, because however she’d started this, that was . . . well, it might be the most passionate kiss he’d ever gotten . . . He’d archive it if there were a place around here to archive things like that. His luck with women was okay until he said something weird, and if he managed to not do that, they never kissed him like this, and he never brought them back here . . . his home wasn’t exactly somewhere he could bring them, and being here added something to it. He still forced himself to break it after a couple of minutes. “It’ll be like I’m dead to you after you go.”

“No, I’ll know you’re alive and okay somewhere . . . somewhere safe, like here.”

“What about –“

“I haven’t slept with him since he was a demon.”

God, she really wasn’t making this easy. Stepping back and grabbing a hold of her hands to make her stop, Dean said, “Does that make a difference? And what about your Dean’s soul being fused with that guy’s soul? Whatever tied you to him probably still ties you to –“

“He’s immortal and even if we weren’t separated by that, I’d be separated from my Dean forever, because he’s part of someone else now . . . and the part he took from my Dean will be tortured when I die. Maybe it’ll spark something in him to make him lose control of the Mark.”

“Are you using me to weaken whatever you have with him, so you can help him keep the Mark under control?“ That would lead to her regretting it . . . might even have a negative effect on that guy’s control over the Mark if he found out, so that wasn’t a good reason to do this.

“No.”

“You know you’ll more than likely be separated from me for forever too, right?”

“Yes, but there’s always a chance for vacations.” Maybe. He hoped so, but that wasn’t a definite. They could be separated for forever too.

“Are you using me to get back at him for killing your Dean?” Doing this for revenge wasn’t a good reason to do it. 

“No.”

“Are you using me to get over your Dean?” That wasn’t the right frame of mind for her to be in to do this either.

“No. I’ll never be over my Dean.”

“Well, then why –“

“Because I like you . . . You’re good to me. And maybe I do want comfort, and I want you to be the one to give it to me . . . But you’re right . . . I didn’t think about you. I didn’t think about what it might mean if –“ Crashing his mouth over hers, he unzipped his workout hoodie and threw it on the floor before backing her towards the bed. He wasn’t worried about him.


	115. Grieving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is sex in this one, it's marked at the start and end of the more explicit parts.

“Are you sure?” 

Ignoring how it made me feel to hear that voice ask me that, I told him, “Yes.” I needed comfort, and I needed someone to make me feel a little better, even if it was for a short while. I needed to wash myself clean with this Dean. I couldn’t let the last person I slept with to be a demon that killed my Dean, if that’s what he did. I mean it explained everything didn’t it? Demon Dean had wanted me. I told him no and he brought up the threat of getting rid of my Dean . . . fusing them together . . . probably because he knew it’d keep me from dying, just like this Dean had said. And then he’d done exactly what he’d said he’d do.

The MoC Dean woke up from being a demon, and he knew what he’d done. I was dying from a drug overdose, and he had to save me . . . made him feel even more indebted to me . . . We ended up in another universe, separated from the others, and he thought it was his fault that we were there because we moved Abaddon’s head, so he was even more determined to get things right. 

He was genuine about wanting something for himself, that something being me, but he couldn’t let himself truly have me because of what he did as a demon to get me. It’s why he’d put a complete ban on sex, because he felt too guilty about it . . . with good reason. It’s why he’d gotten so mad when he told me what he wanted with me the night before he stabbed me . . . It hadn’t been my Dean thinking that the MoC Dean was trying to replace him that’d gotten him so worked up . . . It’d all come from the MoC Dean getting mad at himself for saying it when he knew deep down what he did as a demon, and then he’d said what he did about Rogue, and I lashed out and gave him a reason to be angry with me. 

My Dean might be his conscience, but it wasn’t really my Dean . . . my Dean was more like the memories the MoC Dean was suppressing . . . even if he remembered them, the MoC Dean wouldn’t feel like he was my Dean any more than my Dean had felt like the guy who broke up with me for not telling him about Adam sooner in our do-over life. Might even dislike him as much as my Dean had disliked the younger version of him that’d he’d played. Even if he didn’t, the MoC Dean wouldn’t feel the same way about me that my Dean had.

And there was me, wanting so desperately to believe that my Dean was still around . . . trying to find him anyway I could. I actually slept with the demon that’d had God destroy my Dean’s very essence just days after he was replaced by the demon . . . I’d just wanted him, but . . . I’d done this horrible, unforgivable thing to find him and it wasn’t even him. 

The Men of Letters Dean’s lips left mine, and he looked down at me. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

In concern he said, “We can stop if –“

He paused to wipe a couple of tears away from my cheeks, and I gave him a sad smile. “No . . . You’re the first good thing that’s happened to me in a long time.”

“Are these tears of happiness, cause –“ 

**I smiled** at his bad awkward joke before wrapping my legs around his waist, so I could flip him over. “No. They’re tears of regret, but not because of you.” I leaned down to kiss him and focused everything I had into letting him know that I’d meant what I’d just said in the way my tongue danced with his before I sat back to give him an erotic show and let myself go. I let myself get lost in it and then did what I thought he needed me to do to get him closer to the edge . . . until his hands pulled me back down, and then he rolled us, so he was on top again. He gave me a slow lingering kiss as he rejoined us, and then looked down at me. I felt like I should ask. “Were you getting too close, or did you not like –“

Smiling he shook his head. “There’s nothing you’ve done, I haven’t liked yet.” 

He was looking at me the way my Dean only ever let himself look at me sometimes in our training mission, but all the time in our real life . . . My Dean had been giving me that look for a long time in our real life. I just hadn’t known what it meant until our training mission. “What about when I killed the okami?” 

He laughed. I liked his laugh. He didn’t laugh enough. “No, I like not having monsters that are supposed to be dead chasing me around . . . It was nothing you did . . . just thought . . . I’m supposed to be making you feel better, not the other way around.”

“Oh yeah? How are you –“ 

I gasped when he pushed in as deep as he could. “You like it that way better?”

I breathed out, “Yes . . . the deeper the better,” and he more than obliged. He’d done a good job on all the foreplay . . . learned what I liked as he went along and took his time, but I’d really needed him to fill me as much as possible, and I really liked the way he kept filling me now in tantalizing slow movements. It allowed me to feel every inch, every detail, every action and reminded me this was really happening, but in a good way. When he propped my hips up under my pillow, it got even better, and he was tender and kind and attentive to what I wanted . . . listened to my cues on when I liked something, like a change in tempo or angle . . . and he kept it face-to-face and caressed me, held me . . . kissed me as much as possible. 

**When we** were done, he stayed on top, and it kept me feeling safe. I hadn’t felt safe in a really long time. “Thank you.”

He laughed again. “Not used to getting thanked for sex, so . . . is you’re welcome the right thing to say, or . . . “

I laughed that time. “I know you weren’t sure. I –“

“I knew what I wanted . . . just wasn’t sure it was right for you.”

“This was what I needed. And it was a good first effort.”

“First effort, huh?”

“Yeah, we’re definitely doing this again.”

Getting a slightly more serious look, Dean said, “Are you sure that’s what you want? It doesn’t have to be more than –“ I nodded, so he said, “Do you want to talk about him?”

“Who?”

“Your Dean?”

“I’m not sure about sure about post-coital etiquette, but I don’t think that’s something you’re supposed to do. It’s just asking for trouble, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know . . . Seems like the best time for it . . . with you, anyway . . . think you’re more likely to talk about him now, and I think it’s something you need to do.”

“He used to say that I had to get things out . . . that it’s the type of person I am . . . What do you want to know?”

“What’s the nicest thing he did for you?”

“He made the deal with Sam the first day I met him . . . He wouldn’t go after Ruby if Sam didn’t go after me . . . and he brought me with him before he knew about my past and felt like it was his responsibility to protect me . . . He did something nice for me every day after that, even on his worst days, there was always something he did that was nice . . . like when he locked me in a freezer, he took the kids in my physics class on a field trip to teach them something they didn’t understand in a way they would . . . and even when he left just before I had Rogue, he left Sam with me . . . I’d have rather had him, but I know why he did it, and . . . he came back. He left for all of a few hours, and they might’ve been the hardest few hours of my life, but he came back . . . Didn’t matter what he did really, just as long as he came back.”

“And now he can’t?”

“No, and it’s my fault.”

“Because you wouldn’t sleep with the demon?” 

“Yeah, it’s more that than me giving the demon the idea for it . . . he got that from going through my dreams . . . I’d said it to Dean a few weeks before that . . . wasn’t my fault for thinking it. I had a choice, and I made the wrong one . . . and the demon got what he wanted anyway. I forgive the guy with the Mark. I even forgive the demon because of what he was . . . But what I did -”

Wiping away my tears again, he said, “Does it help if I say you didn't do anything wrong?"

"What?"

"I'm him . . . You did the right thing, and you and he have paid the price for it, but it was the right thing. You didn't do anything that needs to be forgiven."

"But you're not him."

"I am where it counts . . . You still don’t regret –“

“No . . . do you?”

“Not at all.”

“Are you sure, because –“ He silenced me with a kiss, and I think round 2 was even better.


	116. Abrupt Goodbyes

Dean unbuttoned the cuff on his white shirt sleeve and rolled it up. Looking back at the others, he glanced towards Beth and said, “You’re sure you don’t want to do this?”

“No . . . you’ve already done your confession. It’s all yours.” 

Bobby asked, “You’re sure the meat suit is dead?”

“She was in our universe.” 

Bobby rolled his eyes, but Beth didn’t catch it. “Well, the demon ain’t gonna say one way or the other.”

Jo offered a suggestion. “We could make sure it is?”

Her Mom quickly vetoed that. “We’re not offin’ her if we don’t have to do it, Jo.”

“No, but we could check for scars.”

Sighing, Beth said, “I’ll do an exorcism. If the body starts to fall to the floor, we’ll know it’s dead. Then I’ll do a reverse exorcism to put her back in the body.”

The others all looked at one another, and Dean smiled to himself before turning to get what he needed to summon the demon. “What’s the demon’s real name?”

“Eisheth.”

Dean’s eyebrows rose before he looked back at Beth. “Demon royalty?”

“Yeah, but she killed the original Eisheth to get the name . . . When she was alive, she was Giorlama Spera.”

“As in Giulia Tofana’s daughter?” Beth smiled at Dean’s question, and Dean said, “That’s even better.” He bet she knew a thing or two about making potions, and he hadn’t been sure the cure would work on a demon as old as the original Eisheth. A demon that had been a demon that long wasn’t likely to stay anything but a demon. It probably would’ve killed her.

It didn’t take long for the demon to come through when Dean had finished the summoning ritual. Looking back at Beth again, he asked if she recognized the person the demon was possessing. “Meg Masters, but I don’t know if she’s dead if you and Sam didn’t have daevas drag her out a window. Depends on how Meg’s fate ties into this branch.”

Getting to her feet, Beth faced the blonde woman. She didn’t even wait for the demon to say anything before she rattled off a quick exorcism. The demon cloud was exiting and almost all the way out when Beth stopped on the last syllable looked back at the others to get their approval on the woman being dead. Bobby nodded without taking his eyes off the demon, and Beth turned back around to say the exact same exorcism in reverse almost as fast as she’d said it going forward. Dean thought that was incredibly sexy.

“What the hell are you morons doing? You summon me here just to exorcise me? I wasn’t even –“

“You were topside. You wouldn’t have a meat suit if you weren’t. Are you still serving Azazel? If you are –“

“He died years ago.”

“Let me guess . . . John Winchester killed him.”

She didn’t say anything, and Beth looked at Dean. “I don’t know how he did it . . . if he –“

“We have an angel blade in the bunker.”

Beth paused. “You knew?”

“No. Like I said, he never mentioned a demon. Maybe Mom did make a deal. He knew she was a hunter. She knew what he was. Maybe she told him, and they killed the demon when it came back . . . I just know your angel blade isn’t the first one I’ve seen. There’s one at the bunker. I like yours better.” 

Looking back at Meg, Beth said, “If Azazel’s dead . . . if he is, I’d say Meg is pretty pissed off that Crowley’s moved in as the King of Hell now that Lilith’s gone.”

“Crowley?! Is that why you summoned me? I don’t work for that douche . . . I’m trying to –“

“What if I told you, Crowley was our real target, and we were hoping to offer you the opportunity to help us topple his reign?”

That got the demon’s attention, and then Beth gave her a spiel . . . told the demon the absolute truth on what the cure would do, and yet by the end, the demon was perfectly fine with sitting there, so Beth could cuff her and pass the floor over to Dean. Walking past Beth, Dean whispered, “How’d you do that?”

“It’s almost verbatim what I said to mine . . . nothing special about it. She really hates Crowley. And now you know Azazel is really dead. Your parents did the world a massive favor by getting rid of him.” 

Yeah, he was finding out how big of an impact on this world, his family had really had . . . bigger than he ever knew. There was that, and he’d known that stopping Lilith was important and something that had to be done, but all the things that would’ve happened after that . . . no Lucifer, no Alphas, no Eve, no Leviathan, no Purgatory. Abaddon was gone, and in the future, there wouldn’t be the trouble with Metatron, because the Leviathan weren’t here to uncover the Leviathan tablet . . . Dean was thinking that his next task would be going in search of the tablets Beth had told him about, so he could bring them back to the bunker, and then they’d never be a problem . . . He may not have done the hunts he would’ve done in another life but he’d done different ones and saved other people . . . dealt with more witches and his fair share of cursed objects and monsters, just not as many spirits. 

His family had done a lot, but he was the last one in his family, in the country, that was a true Men of Letters. The people he was getting help from now would make his job a little easier, but they wouldn’t give it the same respect he did. It was part of his legacy, so it’s probably why it was so important to him. He needed to live up to that and . . . right now he was really just trying to think of any reason he could not to go with Beth, especially since she was supposed to go when they finished this cure. 

5 days . . . that’s all he’d gotten with her. Maybe he could convince her to stay the full week, but as for him going with her . . . there were the other Dean Winchesters that she had with her. She didn’t need another one to add to the mix. It was his responsibility to stay, but that didn’t mean it was easy. Keeping the Men of Letters going had never been easy. It was a sacrifice, but one he was willing to make . . . except he’d sacrificed everything for it, and . . . well, that’s why he was the last one. 

\----------------

Things were going pretty well with the cure. The hunters were keeping an eye on things, but now that it seemed like the cure was working, they . . . looked a little like they were trying to keep from being bored, but Dean suspected that’s because they were trying to distance themselves from the emotional toll it was taking on Meg. Hunters didn’t seem like an emotional lot. They seemed like they’d lost so much that they distanced themselves from the pain in others. It didn’t mean that they weren’t caring and couldn’t offer comfort or even that they weren’t invested, but maybe they had to distance themselves from it somewhat, or everytime they came across it in others, it would add to burdens they already carried that were too great, or he assumed that’s what it was. 

They were on the 6-hour mark, and Meg had become a lot more sociable . . . a crying, craving acceptance, kind of sociable. He talked to her. He probably shouldn’t, because she was still a demon, but it seemed to calm her down, even if he stayed outside the devil’s trap to do it. He didn’t make her promises he couldn’t keep, and he listened to what she had to say . . . she seemed to want to confess a lot of her crimes to him. Hearing a demon’s confession was . . . well, demons did a lot of bad things.

“Do we?” 

Dean and everyone in the room looked to towards the doors at the front of the church. They were still closed . . . the demon must’ve teleported in here, that’s why nobody had heard it. Didn’t seem to matter that the second demon in the church was in a church on hallowed ground either. He was an extremely powerful demon. Dean got to his feet, but the demon wasn’t focused on him. It was focused on Beth. 

“What did you do, Dean?”

The demon looked down at his chest and shrugged. “What I had to do.” Beth’s phone started ringing, and the demon flicked his wrist to pin everyone who wasn’t Beth against a wall to stop them finishing the exorcisms they’d started. “Those don’t work on me . . . I’m tied to the body, and I can’t be killed . . . even by your killing exorcism, other me. But I won’t kill you . . . guessing you’re on the no-kill list too.” Looking back at Beth, Demon Dean nodded towards the phone in her hand, “Go ahead and answer it Beth . . . I’ll wait, and now you don’t have to try and listen over an exorcism.”

“Hello? . . . Sam . . . Yeah, I see that. He’s with me . . . How long . . . the day Amara disappeared? Then who the hell have I been talking to everyday when I check in if . . . your brother . . . you guys have had him trapped all this time, or he took off . . . And you didn’t tell me, because? . . . Is everyone okay, or . . . no kill list . . . got it.”

Hanging up, Beth kept her eyes on the demon. “You killed yourself?”

“Had to . . . don’t have to sleep as a demon and I can control the Mark better like this, so the next time we land in another universe with Amara, she won’t be able to track us through me . . . seemed like the best option.”

Beth slumped a little. “I don’t even . . . why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“Did it before they knew I was going to do it . . . I think they might’ve thought they could cure me before you found out . . . started it and everything, but I told them why I did it . . . they decided it was the best option too. Got tired of waiting for you though, so I went looking for you. Saw you leave the bunker and come here. Called them before I came in here, so they could verify they weren't dead . . . in case you were wondering. How much longer is this going to take?” Looking behind her at Meg, Dean said, “I could kill her if you want to speed this along.”

“No, uh . . . she’s got 2 more hours . . . less.”

Demon Dean looked at Meg again. “She says I can’t kill you . . . You wanna be cured? I could let you out. Spare you feeling all those things you don’t want to feel. That’d speed this along too.”

“Dean!”

Throwing Beth a look, Demon Dean said, “What? I’ve been patient. It’s time to go.”

She looked back at Meg and said, “She’ll be stuck feeling like this forever . . . probably develop a human blood addiction.” Looking at Dean, who was still pinned against the wall, she said, “Finish it . . . it’s time for me to go.”

She meant finish the cure, but she also wanted him to say their interview was over. He was the one keeping her here. He had some conditions of his own first. If he could come to her whenever he wanted after she got back to her universe, and she could come back to this universe if she wanted, his interview was over. 

As soon as he thought it, she and Demon Dean disappeared, and the force that’d been keeping the rest of them against the wall dropped them all at once. Maybe he shouldn’t have put that condition in on saying his interview over. He hadn’t told her he would, but seeing Demon Dean and hearing the way the others had kept her in the dark all week on something that big . . . She needed help, and they weren’t going to give it to her when she got home. That might be where she’d need it the most. And there was no way in Hell he was going to let this be the last he saw of her. Hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye. Couldn’t really if he didn’t want Demon Dean to know she’d been with him. Might’ve gotten him killed or had him incorporated into Demon Dean too, and he wouldn’t be any help to her that way. 

Bobby walked up to Dean and said, “That the guy she’s with . . . the one with the Mark?”

“Uh, yeah . . . when he dies, he becomes a demon.” 

Sighing, Bobby shook his head. “Wasn’t sure about this multiple-universe thing . . . you sure you don’t have an identical twin out there? I mean, he looked exactly like you . . . say every hair on his head was exactly the same . . . He was just dressed different, more like you were when I met ya.”

“Yeah, he was me . . . just with a different life.”

“So, now you’re alone again.”

“For now.”

Bobby looked at him and said, “Well, I’ll help ya as long as you want.”

“I will too!”

Dean looked from Bobby to Meg, who’d just yelled that. Beth had gotten him both of them . . . just like she said she would.


	117. Unexpected Greetings

I landed in another street in another town somewhere in America . . . on another night, like any other. It was populated, so we weren’t home yet. It looked like I was 5th after the despondent Dean and his brother along with the kid Dean and baby Sam. Kid Dean came running up to me to wrap his arms around me legs in a big hug, while he told me he’d missed me. I could only imagine how he’d be when he saw his Mom and Dad again.

I wasn’t expecting who popped up next. I extricated myself from kid Dean’s grasp before bending down to his height and saying, “You know how I told you about my daughter?” Kid Dean nodded, so I said, “She’s here. I need to see her . . . I’ll introduce her in a few minutes, okay?” He nodded, so I let him go and took the 10 or steps I needed to get to my Dad and wrapped my arms around he and Rogue. 

“You okay, kiddo?”

“Better now, but I wasn’t. We’ll talk about it later when it’s just the two of us. Can I see her?”

Dad handed her over, and the first thing my little girl did wasn’t to tell me, ‘No . . . hand,’ because I was holding her instead of giving her my hand. It was to burst into tears when I took her. “Mom back.”

“Yeah, I’m back.” _Not sure how long I will be this time, but I’m here now._ Walking away from the rest of the group before seeing who else had shown up, I was dreading the question I knew she was going to ask me. Thankfully, she held off on it. She mostly just held onto me in a death grip and silently sobbed with the occasional hiccup. “It’s okay. I’m here now . . . You had fun with grandpa?”

“I good . . . Mom back.”

Patting her back, I might’ve teared up a little. She was saying ‘I’ now and her sentences were coming out easier. “You could be bad, and I’ll come back . . . where’s your seal?”

“Zoo.” 

Aww, she’d learned the word zoo. “You want a seal, like your monster, so you can keep it.”

“Want seal . . . like mon-ster.”

“You still have your monster?”

“Yes.”

She’d learned ‘yes’. “You know I always wanted to get you a pet seal . . . When we get home, I’ll get you one . . . you won’t get to keep it if we get one now.” If it was inanimate, I don’t think we could bring things with us unless we’d started the mission with it, so no magnificent beds. If it was alive, like a seal or ogre, I think we could.

“Read me?”

Read me? I’d missed so much. “You want me to read to you?”

She nodded. “Monster book.”

“Where the Wild Things Are?” 

She nodded again. 

“Yeah, I’ll read it when we find somewhere to stay.”

And then looking over my shoulder at the rest of the group she asked the question, I’d been dreading. “Dad back?”

Sitting on the curb with her, I focused all of my attention on her. Slowly exhaling, so I could try and stay calm . . . I wasn’t sure what to say. This was harder to do than talk to God’s sister. All I could do at first was shake my head, and I think she knew it was bad news. She gave me the saddest eyes ever and asked, “Be back?”

Dean said I had to tell her. And he was right. It wasn’t fair for her to expect to see her Dad every time someone walked in the door the way she had when he was in Heaven . . . or every time we did one of these jumps for however long we kept doing this. “No . . . He’s not going to –“

She burst into a different kind of tears and latched onto my neck. I let her cry it out . . . tried to stop myself from doing the same . . . wasn’t easy. I might’ve lost a few tears, but I couldn’t let her know I was crying . . . had to be strong and let her know it’d be okay even though it didn’t feel okay right now . . . he was supposed to help me raise her . . . we’d everything split up . . . tried not to think about that. Couldn’t keep myself from thinking it. 

When she’d tired herself out, she whispered, “I protect Mom.” I didn’t want that on her shoulders, but I couldn’t tell her ‘no.’ It’s the first thing she’d said . . . the first thought that helped her get through it maybe . . . gave her a purpose, a mission of her own, a reason to keep moving. I knew how important those were.

“And I’ll protect you.” She didn’t say ‘no.’ She nodded. Maybe she knew I needed a mission too. 

“Cas back?” 

I looked over at the rest of the group. It didn’t look like it . . . everyone else was here though . . . except for Purgatory Dean and Sam. She’d been through enough for one night though. “Maybe when we get home.”

She nodded and held onto me a little tighter. “Miss Mom.”

“You missed me?” She nodded, so I said, “I missed you too. I fought to see you again . . . I’m thinking that might be why God took you from me. If I have to go to work again –“

“No work.”

“If I have to work again, I’ll be back

“Dad say be back.”

“I know. It’s not his fault . . . I’ll explain it some day when you’re older . . . but I’m here now.”

Nodding, she said, “Dog Dad?”

“You wanna see him?”

“He no Dad . . . hug Dad.”

“He’s not your Dad, but he hugs like Dad?” She nodded, so I said, “Okay. I’ll go get –“

“No . . . want Mom . . . Mom read . . . Dog Dad.”

“You just want to sit like this for a while?” Patting me on the shoulder, she let me know that’s what she wanted, so that’s what we did . . . until kid Dean came over. I saw him kind of milling around the others, he’d been thrilled to see his parents, but then when the enthusiasm wore off, and his parents were talking to the others, he decided to come over on his own.

“Hey, Rogue? You want to meet someone?”

“No. Want Mom.”

Kid Dean walked up and sat next to me to try and get a look at Rogue, but she turned her face away from him. “What’s her name?”

“Rogue.”

“Hi, Rogue . . . I’m Dean.”

At the mention of his name, she looked at him. “Boy.”

She’d learned so many new words. My Dad and the Dean that’d been with her had done a great job. “Yeah . . . he’s a boy, not a man like the other Deans.”

Speaking to Rogue, Dean said, “You look sad.”

She waited a beat and then decided to answer him. “Dad no be back.”

Kid Dean looked at me and said, “Her Dad’s not coming back?”

I shook my head, and he looked at the others. “He’s not the one with the black eyes?”

“No.”

“But he’s the one you were with when we met.”

“I know. I missed her Dad and –“

Nodding sagely, Dean said, “He looks like him.”

I smiled briefly and said, “Yeah . . . and underneath it all, he’s a good man, like her Dad. He just feels guilty all the time . . . and he doesn’t like himself very much. It makes him make silly decisions.”

“Silly decisions, like getting the black eyes? He is not the same now.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll help.”

“With what?”

“With Rogue.”

“I thought you were helping Chewy?”

“My Mom and Dad said I’m too small to help him . . . Rogue needs my help and you do.”

“You don’t have to –“ 

“That’s my job.”


	118. Stepping Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is from the point of view of solo-Dean (the one they stopped Crowley from taking to get the First Blade and now the longest surviving Dean on the team).

Dean looked over towards the doorway of the living room when he heard a kid say, “Dog Dad?”

There was only one person that called Dean that. She must've been asking for him, so Beth had sent the kid Dean out to get him. Honestly, Dean would rather be with her. The rest of them all being here was a bit much. Even a version of his Mom and Dad sitting in the corner, taking it all in, was a bit much. They were years younger than any of the rest of them, the rookies, and yet he bet the others all thought of them as their parents. Only people those two were parents to here were the kids.

The Mopey Dean and his Perky Sam were filling everyone in on Cas and the Sam and Dean from Purgatory dying. Dean glanced towards Gabriel to see how he was taking it. He knew Gabriel had been close to Cas. Gabriel wasn't giving much away. All he did was glance at Dean and say, “Dealing with new recruits is a pain in the ass. I’ve got this if you want to go.”

“Maybe show ‘em the version you showed me. Might keep ‘em busy for a while . . . They need to know what they’re walking into there too.”

Gabriel smirked and said, “You got it,” as Dean stood to follow the kid Dean out of the room. Gabriel had made Dean his own box set of Supernatural . . . not the one Beth saw, but one of her universe. It was an R-rated version. Blood and guts everywhere, especially after the Croat outbreak . . . The similarities between the show and the life he'd lived were pretty exact for the first 3 seasons, except for that raging bitch Rachel. After Beth’s Dean had gotten out of Hell, things really started changing, but they were small differences, and then things blew up in the year Sam was supposed to have been in the cage. After that, everything was different and it was harder to find any similarities. Gabriel had even put the training mission in there, so everything Beth and the others had been saying would make sense, and then the series cut off when this mission started. Dean guessed they all knew what’d happened on the mission for the most part, except for what had been going on with the other teams over the last however many months.

Dean hadn’t known what the hell was happening when he, Gabriel, and Rogue landed somewhere without everyone else. They'd waited for about 15 minutes for the rest to come through. Eventually, after a few expletives directed in God’s direction, Gabriel had said the rest weren’t coming, and they had to work that case alone. They’d gotten through it fairly fast with the help of Rogue and then they’d kept on going through universe after universe. In some, Dean had introduced his counterparts to Rogue and showed them a picture of Beth that Gabriel had given to him. In others, Gabriel kept all three of them hidden and did things without the Sams and Deans of those universes knowing anyone was changing anything at all. Didn’t take much, misplacing something here, being sent in a different direction there, and then their paths were changed. 

After the last one, Dean's team had been kept in a holding pattern. At first, they’d thought the job was done, but because they didn’t leave, he and Gabriel had started searching for what else they could’ve missed. Gabriel had come back from a trip to the future saying everything looked good, so maybe they were waiting for the others to get done and could finally go home together. That's when he'd given Dean the DVDs to prepare Dean for his new life. Turns out they'd been kept waiting, so God could bring them all together for another universe instead. Gabriel knew a lot, but even he didn't know what the hell God was doing half the time.

Thanks to the DVDs and seeing what this universe jumping thing was like when it happened more than a few times, Dean had a lot more respect for the original team now, not that he hadn’t when he met them, but he hadn’t really known what to think of them when they’d met. He’d more or less just wanted to get out of his own life and had done whatever he had to do to do that. It’d taken him a while to get over the shock of what he’d done and right around the time he’d felt like he was getting a handle on things and maybe understood them, they’d been separated. And now . . . well, now, he was actually kinda glad he’d signed on for all of this. Felt like he was actually doing something good with his life again, and he hadn’t felt that for a long time.

Walking into the room, Dean saw Rogue curled up against Beth at the head of one of the beds. Beth glanced up at him when she finished the last page of her book and then whispered to Rogue, “He’s here.” Rogue nodded, like she knew that, but she wouldn’t look at him, and Beth said, “She’s had a rough night. She wants you to hold her for a while.”

“What kind of a rough night?”

“The kind where she found out her Dad isn’t coming back.”

Her Dad wasn’t coming back? What? Dean guessed maybe he thought it was . . . well, when Cas, and the Purgatory Sam and Dean hadn’t shown up, at first, he’d thought that maybe they were all together, and then when he found out those 3 were gone, he’d thought that the original Dean on the team had been somewhere on his own. That guy was so good he wouldn’t even need another team. “And Cas?”

Beth shook her head. “Maybe we’ll see him when we get home.”

Dean slumped a little. Yeah, it was probably best if they spaced out the bad news. He’d been there for the aftermath of Rogue finding out her Sam was gone. She spent days hiding under beds and in closets and anywhere she could find . . . some crying, but mostly hiding. Maybe doing it without her parents being there hadn't been the best idea, but Gabriel had said that if anybody else didn't come back, it'd be harder on her hearing it all at once. It looked like Gabriel had been right. Losing her Dad . . . Dean didn’t think she’d ever be the same, and if you added Cas on top of that . . . Poor Rogue. Glancing at Beth . . . Dean felt bad for her too. After seeing everything she’d been through . . . It wasn’t right. And how was she still alive if that guy was gone? Was it because of the connections she’d formed with the others? “I wanna know what happened when we’re done in here. They’re watching some DVDs your Dad gave me . . . like the ones you watched, but for your universe, so they know what to expect. Think the first 3 seasons might interest you. They have Rachel in them.”

Biting her bottom lip, Beth nodded before looking down at Rogue and shifting her weight out from under her, so she could sit at the edge of the bed and pass her off to Dean. Didn’t look like she wanted to leave. He could understand that. She hadn’t seen her daughter in a while. Probably hadn’t known if she was alive or not and then when she’d heard the Chuckle brothers tell her about Cas . . . she had to have wondered if the same thing had happened to Rogue and her Dad.

She might not want to leave Rogue, but she needed some kind of a break. Telling Rogue something like that had probably taken a lot out of her. It looked like it had. “On second thought, maybe seeing Rachel isn’t the best idea. I know you weren’t a fan. Why don’t you go take a bath . . . think your Dad set this place up for you, like a ski resort even though we’re in the middle of the suburbs . . . there’s a hot tub in the en-suite . . . said we couldn’t go in there. It’s just for you.” 

Glancing at the door to the bathroom, Dean let her know where it was. It was still in the room, so she didn’t have to be far from Rogue, but it still gave her some space of her own. “A hot tub for me? How’d I miss that?”

Dean smiled briefly. “You were pretty focused on Rogue.”

Looking at Rogue, Beth said, “I’ll just be in there, okay?”

Curling into Dean’s chest, Rogue nodded, and Beth hesitantly went to grab her clothes bag and take it into the other room as Dean sat on the bed with Rogue.

Rogue waited until Beth was gone and the door was closed before saying, “I protect Mom.”

Yeah, he bet she would . . . with everything she had, so she wouldn’t lose her last parent. He knew what that was like. She hadn’t cried once for her parents or Cas . . . She’d cried a little when she found out about Sam, but other than that, she was her mother and father’s daughter. She’d held it together, because its what she’d had to do . . . until she saw Beth earlier, and then it all came flooding out. “She’ll protect you too, and when she’s at work –“

“Be back . . . Mom say be back . . . Dad say be back.”

Yeah, her Dad had told her he’d be back. “Your Mom came back. Doesn’t mean your Dad didn’t want to though . . . I know how much you meant to him.”

“I no good . . . no hide . . . no Dad.”

Ah, fuck. It’s just like Beth had said. “No, that’s not why you’re Dad didn’t come back . . . Nothing that happened to him is your fault. And you were good. You can do bad things and still be good . . . that’s what your Mom would say.”

“Miss Dad.”

“I know.”

“Dog Dad no Dad . . . hug Dad.”

He smiled briefly. “Yeah, well, I guess I would. I’m a lot like your Dad . . . even if I’m not him.”

“Dad protect Mom . . . Dog Dad protect Mom.”

“Thought you wanted to protect me.”

Patting his chest with her little hand, she whispered, “Dog Dad no sad . . . no protect.”

That’s why she’d wanted to protect him? She’d known what he’d been going through when she met him. Glancing at the bathroom door, he wondered if Beth had known that. Probably. She and her daughter were on the same wavelength about a lot of things. “You’re right. I’m not sad anymore . . . You helped me not be sad.”

“I protect?”

“Yeah . . . you protected me from myself . . . I’ll help you protect your Mom . . . You want me to read to you?”

“Dead?”

“No, I won’t read that. That’s your . . . that was your Dad’s book. I’m not taking his place. Your Dad was special. You only get one of him.”

“Sing?”

Dean laughed. Every night it was the same. “No, I’m not singin’ . . . I can’t sing. Who sings to you?”

“Mom. Mom sad.”

Yeah, she probably was too sad to sing to her. “You wanna listen to something? Think I can reach her iPod from here."

She nodded, so he reached over to get it off of the nightstand and started flicking through. If Beth had it out, she’d probably been listening it. Dean remembered her Dean putting all this stuff on here after Saoirse erased it. Good thing he took the time to do it when he had the time. “I don’t know what you want to –“

“Life on Mars.”

Dean looked at the bedroom door. It was closed, but a kid must’ve been on the other side of it. “You comin’ in?”

The door opened, and Rogue said, “Boy.” Boy? Was that her nickname for the kid Dean? Dean smiled briefly. She was so smart. She knew more about what was going on than anyone probably knew. 

“Hey, Rogue.” Looking at Dean, the kid Dean said, “Beth sang me Life on Mars every night when Mom and Dad were away. She told me she used to sing it to her daughter.”

Lucky kid. Got both parents and Beth to babysit him when his parents weren't there. “David Bowie, huh?”

“Where’s the record, I can put it on if you want. Beth taught me how.”

“How old are you?”

Holding up 5 fingers, the kid Dean answered, “Almost 5.”

Almost 5. 1980s. No iPods. He wondered if this kid even knew he wasn’t in the same decade anymore. Holding up Beth’s iPod, Dean said, “Don’t have a record player . . . just have this. It’s Beth’s iPod . . . It’s a little outdated, but . . . we’re in the future now, so this is something we use to listen to music in the future.” 

Dean found David Bowie and scrolled down to Life on Mars before waving the kid closer. Coming up to look at it, the kid Dean took it when Dean handed it to him. “Just push the screen here, and it should start.” 

The kid Dean looked from Dean to the screen, hesitantly pushed the song, and smiled when it started. Then his forehead crinkled a little. “I like records better.”

Dean laughed. “Yeah, me too kid. Never had a place where I could have a record player though.”

“You will when we get to Beth’s planet.” 

Is that how they were explaining the universe thing to this kid . . . suddenly made her choice of song make so much more sense, not that it wasn’t a good song, but everything she did seemed to have a reason behind it. “Yeah, I haven’t been there yet, but that’s what I hear.”

Kid Dean started to say something else, and Rogue put her finger in front of her lips to say, “Shhh . . . no say . . . sing.”

Kid Dean looked at Dean for clarification, so Dean said, “She wants to hear the song.” He’d gotten pretty fluent in Rogue.


	119. Uneasy Truths

Dean had gone quiet when the Dean on TV crawled out of his grave and showed up on Bobby’s doorstep, and Sam guessed that meant it was the way it’d happened for his brother. His brother seemed to go quiet when things were the same on the show as they’d been in their life. At the start of the next scene, Sam laughed when his brother groaned, and his Dad audibly sighed next to him. Why were they both annoyed? Because they’d both thought Rachel was gone for good after Lilith finished her off at the end of season 3, and yet there she was standing outside of the Impala in the first episode of season 4. When Ruby knocked her out, Sam’s brother might’ve snorted.

It was weird watching their lives like this, but highly entertaining, because there were enough differences to keep it from feeling like their lives. The most awkward parts had been . . . well, they’d been when his Mom was supposed to die, because she was sitting on the other side of his Dad, and all the sex scenes . . . very PG-13, but very uncomfortable to watch next to your parents when you were in some of them. He figured Gabriel did that to make it uncomfortable for Sam and his brother. 

The second the Sam in the TV show asked, “Who are you?” and Rachel answered, “My name is Elsbeth Foley. I was born in Indiana. I moved around growing up. I live in Ireland now. I should be getting my PhD any day,” Sam, his brother, and his Dad all sat forward. 

“Holy shit, that’s Beth?”

Sam glanced at his brother. “Looks like it.”

“She doesn’t look anything like her . . . well she does, but she’s not as –“ glancing past Sam at his Mom and Dad, Dean said, “attractive as she is now. Or I don’t think she is.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like Rachel wasn’t attractive.”

Dean threw Sam a look. “Are you kidding me? There’s no woman on the planet attractive enough to make up for a personality like that.” 

Their attention was brought back to the show when there was a knock on the door. This part was the same as Sam remembered it being when Dean got back from Hell . . . except Beth was tied up in the back ground. Nobody on the show or anyone watching the show really even noticed she was there because of the big reunion . . . until she opened her mouth and said, “You know Sam, you should just tell Dean that was Ruby, that you guys are sleeping together, you’ve started drinking her blood every so often to enhance your powers, and now you can exorcise demons with your mind.” 

Even watching it, Sam felt his face go 10 shades redder as his brother brought his fist up to try and cover his laugh. “She totally outed you!” Dean stopped laughing when the Sam on the screen attacked her. “Ah, dude, that’s cool. She’s tied up.”

Pointing at the TV, Sam said, “That’s not me!”

“I know . . . it’s just . . . I was talking to the guy on screen.” Watching this series had brought his brother back to himself more than Sam had seen him be in a long time . . . before Amara even. It was kind of good to see him laughing and interacting with life again.

A few minutes later, it was Sam's turn to was laugh. “Looks like she outed you too.” She’d just told the Dean on TV that she knew what he’d done in Hell.

Dean shook his head. “No, that’s not good . . . ah, don’t tell him you know more.” Sam and Dean both sat forward again at what she said next. Looking at him, Dean asked, “If she told them then that Lilith was the final seal, how the hell did Lucifer still get out?”

Sam didn’t know, but he guessed they’d find out. Their attention was drawn back to the screen, as the Dean on screen, predictably went on the attack. Neither one of them were expecting her to say, “I think I’m going to be sick,” and then start gagging. 

Sam smiled as Dean laughed, and their Dad said, “She sure has changed a lot.” Yeah, she had.

They watched for a couple more minutes, and then Dean said, “Not that much . . . she just didn’t know how to fight, but she was fast at thinking on her feet,” as she climbed back up into the window she’d just jumped through, so she could go out the front of the motel room door without leaving tracks.

Something caught Sam's attention when the Dean on the TV went to go find her in the woods. “She knew . . . alternate universe . . . right there. The first time they met.”

“I didn’t know actually . . . or if I did, I didn’t know I knew. I just, uh . . . mostly, I was a bit of a nerd, so . . . alternate universe seemed to fit better than I’d been sucked into a TV show.”

Looking over their shoulders towards the hallway behind them, they saw Beth leaning casually against the doorframe. She’d spent the last couple of days in her room with Rogue. This was the first they'd really seen her. To break the ice, Sam found himself saying, “You told them that day not to kill Lilith?” When she nodded, he asked, “Well then what happened?”

“Fate? People not listening? Combination of the two? In Sam’s mind, I became Dean’s version of Ruby.” Coming to curl up in the empty chair, somewhat separated from the rest, Beth focused her attention on the TV as the TV Dean and Beth went to a diner. It didn't really look like she was up for much talking. He wondered why.

_“I should have never gone into those woods to find you.”_

_“But you did . . . and you can’t change what’s already been done . . . only what you do going forward. I’ll stick around for as long as you want, because I think you’re going to need my help, but I’ll leave it up to you to decide if you want to take it or not . . . And after the way you reacted to what I said last night, you don’t scare me, because to scare someone, there has to be a reasonable expectation of them doing you harm, and now I know you wouldn’t really do anything to me . . . except buy me cake.”_

Sam glanced in Beth’s direction and opened his mouth, but his brother tapped his knee to get his attention and shook his head. What? All he wanted to do was ask a question. His brother gave him a look that said, ‘not now,’ so Sam whispered, “Was she just talking about –“

“What I did in Hell without talking about what I did in Hell? Yeah.”

“He isn’t you.”

Turning his attention back to the TV, Dean muttered, “Yeah,” like he wasn’t entirely sure about that right now.

In the next episode, the Witness Seal was broken. Nobody except the Dean in the show was willing to listen to Beth. As someone who knew what’d happened and that Beth was 100% right, Sam found it incredibly annoying. 

He found the episode after that . . . awkward. It was uncomfortable, because it featured his Mom and Dad and the deal his Mom made with the Yellow-eyed demon, but at the same time, this isn't anything Sam'd had a chance to see. The end was annoying because the TV Dean showed up where TV Sam was practicing his powers with Ruby. Looking at his brother beside him, Sam said, “Was that –“

“Exactly the way it was when I went back in time and then caught you and Ruby? Yeah, except for the call at the end to Beth.” Might as well have tacked on ‘Because I didn’t have anyone to call,’ at the end. That’s what Sam heard even though Dean hadn’t said it.

The next episode was the Rugaru hunt and then the next one was the one with the ghost sickness. Both those hunts seemed pretty similar to what Sam remembered, except maybe things were a little more strained between the brothers on TV . . . and the despite things being strained TV Sam kept trying to get his brother to open up about what Beth had told him the night he met her. They weren’t in a place for that kind of caring and sharing. 

The TV Sam also kept calling Ruby . . . more than Sam remembered calling her, and it was usually at the same time the Dean on TV would call Beth. Beth hadn’t been kidding. The Sam on the show really did seem to believe Beth was Dean’s Ruby, as in Beth was the threat and not Ruby. It was kind of weird. Ruby and Beth hadn’t been in any of these episodes, but their presence was still felt.

The next episode . . . well, it didn’t involve a hunt. It did involve them going to Bobby’s, so the TV Dean could see Beth. There must've been some problems with Ellen and Jo showing up at Bobby's unexpectedly, but then the TV Dean caught up with Beth where she was working, and they went to get pie. The TV Dean told her she couldn’t go home. She handled it pretty well considering . . . then she and Dean did some training the next day, and she was already a lot better than she had been the first night they met her. Then the Sam on TV ambushed her with something at dinner, and Sam had kind of had enough. “Why am I such a dick in this?” 

“It’s exactly the way it happened.”

“I don’t believe that for a second, Beth. Gabriel put this together. He -“

“My Dad hasn’t changed this in any way other than some editing to shorten what happened to fit into the episodes. The scenes that are there are exactly the way they happened in real life. You have it in you to be pure evil, Sam. Why do you think I killed my Sam? Watch this, and you’ll see why.”

“Who are you to judge what’s evil and what’s not?” Sam and Dean looked at their Mom. It’s the first time she’d spoken up throughout this entire thing. “You killed your Sam? And you’re so blasé about it. We don’t kill people. We hunt –“

“Hate to break it to you Mary, but her Sam wasn’t exactly human. Keep watching and you’ll see who she is.”

Everyone on the couch looked over their shoulders to take in the sight of the Dean standing in the same place Beth had been when she caught them unaware on the first episode. Sam’s Mom was quick to dismiss what that Dean had said. “You’re only saying that because you’re a demon.”

“Nope . . . He’s not allowed to come into this house until he admits to Beth what he did . . . I’m all me and all human . . . no Mark and never got it . . . I’ve already seen these, so I know where this is going.” 

“And you believe everything that’s on this show?”

“I do . . . See, I know them . . . Watch the show and start thinking of where she’s from as home. Her Sam made it what it is.”

Uh, okay, so that Dean wasn’t on his family’s side. “Sorry, whose side are you on?”

“You think I should be on a side? How about the right one, Sam?”

“What about your family?’

“Right. Family . . . and you think Beth, Gabriel, and Rogue aren’t in it now . . . keep watching and see where that kind of thinking leads you, Sam. Out of everyone here, you need to watch this the most, and you need to stop denying that Beth and Gabriel are telling the truth . . . that’s what her Sam did, or haven’t you caught that yet.”

Slumping, Sam looked towards the TV. The Beth and Dean on TV were talking near a shed at Bobby’s. 

_”So . . . be a dick? You know that’s the only reason I got that ghost sickness, right?”_

_”It was a spirit, Dean. They don’t think rationally.”_

_We both know why I got sick.”_ After a long pause the Dean on TV said, _”I liked it . . . ripping them apart.”_ Another long pause and then, _”I got pleasure out of inflicting the same kind of pain on them that was done to me . . . and nothing I do up here can change that or . . . make up for it.”_

Sam remembered hearing something similar from his brother, but not until months after this. Glancing at his brother, he hadn’t planned on saying anything, but his brother put his hand up to silence him anyway, while he waited for Beth’s response.

_”Nothing I say about it will ever be the right thing to say, because I wasn’t there. You’re right about not being able to change it, and there’s no such thing as being able to make up for something that’s been done, because it doesn’t change that those things were done, but you shouldn’t discount the things you do now that you’re out . . . a lot of people would keep inflicting pain on others if they really liked doing it, or they’d stop caring, say ‘fuck it,’ and let the world burn, but you haven’t. You won’t, because you have a strong moral compass, and that’s why doing what you did tortures you as much as what happened when you were on the rack . . . That is what tells me that you’re a good man, whether you think so or not. In fact, it’s because you don’t think you are that you’re inspiring. That’s what will get through to Cas.”_

Watching his brother’s reaction to that . . . Sam didn’t know how to read it, and then his brother slumped back into the couch at the response her Dean gave her . . . maybe assessing it to see if he would’ve done the same thing and seeing how she responded . . . His brother was trying to see if that could’ve been him and maybe finding that . . . yeah, he would have done or said the exact same things. It required a tremendous amount of soul searching, and it looked like his brother was doing it . . . probably the same way that the Dean at the back of the room had when he’d watched this. Maybe that’s what Sam should be doing, but he was finding it really difficult . . . especially sitting next to his parents.


	120. Learning From Our Mistakes

_”Yeah, but now I have a new lease on life . . . a second chance. I know you don’t think it’ll be a very long 2nd chance if I’m a hunter, but I could fall through the ice out on the lake tomorrow and be just as dead. 6 weeks. Final offer.”_

_”Shake on it?”_

Dean glanced around the room and noticed he was the only one really paying attention to that one. Looking to his right, he caught sight of Beth. She wasn’t silently crying anymore . . . more like finding comfort in what she was watching now. 

“Did you know?”

The Dean sitting in a chair at the back of the room said, “I caught that too the last time I saw this.”

Beth glanced at both of them and then exhaled a sad laugh. “No . . . told you God’s the ultimate trickster.” Seemed like it. Dean wondered if them meeting Chuck as a prophet was going to be in here anywhere. He wasn't sure how he felt about all of this. Basically, he was watching himself on screen fall harder and harder for Beth without being able to do anything about it, and the Sam on TV being more and more of a douche . . . The hunts he knew. Maybe there were some differences, like him trying and failing to kill Ruby when they saved Anna, but overall, it was the differences in his and Sam's lives that he was paying attention to the most. Episode after episode, he couldn't stop watching, and then the reaper seal happened. The demon at the motel kicked the shit out of Beth before it took her to Alistair and then the episode was over. Grabbing the remote from Sam and ignoring his brother saying he was hungry, Dean hit play on the next episode. 

Cas and Uriel wanted him to interrogate Alistair . . . That's what he'd thought. This was one Dean wanted to see. How’d Beth make this better? Seemed to be what she thought her sole purpose was . . . trying to make his life better. Somehow it kept making his life worse, because it was screwing things up with Sam, but at the same time her being there made it better. Dean knew it did, because things had been screwed up with his own Sam during all of this, but he hadn't had anyone to share the burden with him.

The whole episode from start to finish had Dean enthralled. First, the Dean on the TV show had knocked the TV Sam out and taken his phones to try and keep him from showing up. That was already different. Getting to the warehouse, Beth was a mess. The show didn’t show how she got that way, but Dean was guessing Uriel did it. At some point she also must've gotten Cas onside, because Cas let the Dean on TV untie her and then healed her, and it’d looked like they were going to walk out of there without him having to torture Alistair until Uriel let Alistair out . . . Cas, the Cas Dean had met . . . the Cas that’d died for him, that Cas threw her out the door, slammed it shut and broke it . . . to keep her out and Alistair in, but she found a way in anyway and stayed there with the Dean on TV through it all . . . gave him a reason to keep fighting . . . maybe that’s what she did too . . . for her Dean . . . gave him a reason to keep fighting. And she almost died for it . . . she looked dead, but she wasn't. 

The Dean on the show looked like he thought she was, and was saying all kinds of things to her . . . things Beth hadn’t known he’d said judging by the way Beth sat forward to hear them a little closer . . . Felt like she was crying again, but nobody else would know. You couldn’t hear her, and her facial expression didn’t change. He could feel how she was feeling though. Felt like she was crying. She kept doing it every so often.

She went to go get Sam some food, while the TV Beth and Dean were talking with Cas. She seemed okay when she came back around the time the Beth on TV found out about the prophecies in the next episode, and the Dean in the back of the room said, “You told him about the Mark there, didn’t you?”

“Yeah . . . told him to kill Crowley and Metatron the first time he got the chance too. The only thing that stuck was him not getting the Mark . . . You know how it is . . . He never got buddy-buddy with Crowley though.” 

Yeah, Crowley was . . . he was useful, and he gave them the respect other things out there didn’t. He could be a powerful ally if it was end times for everyone and an evil pain in the ass other times. Sometimes it seemed like he was the devil they knew, so it was best to keep him where he was. He was Crowley, and like a cockroach, he just kept surviving one thing after another . . . unless that thing was God's sister. Not even Crowley could survive her.

God's sister might be why they were in this universe, but if they were all together again, Dean thought maybe this was the final universe they had to do to get to Beth’s universe, and if that was the case, then that’s why they needed to watch this. Wasn’t a waste of time even though he thought it was being wasted on some of the people in the room.

The episode after that was the one with Chuck, and Dean watched it for any detail that might give away that he was God. There were two. One, Chuck flat out said he was God, because he was creating these books and making people come to life, and then they convinced him he wasn’t. Bet Chuck had a good laugh about that when they were gone. Two, at the end, Beth hugged Chuck. She’d done the same thing with Cas, and it was probably because she met him in Heaven, the same way she had Cas.

In between those two clues though, Dean heard probably one of the nicest things he’d heard anyone say to him. She kept doing that. The stuff she said to the guy on the screen was something she was essentially saying to him too. 

_”I can’t just tell you that I think you’re important because of who you are, and when I say who you are, I don’t mean Dean Winchester, the hunter, I mean the real you. You’re not some weapon meant to fight the good fight even if you’re the best at what you do, because I think you’re worth more than that. And I can’t just tell you that I don’t care what mistakes you’ve made or will make, because when they happen, which isn’t as often as you think, they don’t change the way I see you. You’ll always be important to me.”_

No wonder her Dean fell for her.

After that, there was an episode that didn’t really have anything to do with anything, or he didn’t until he paid attention to the Sam in the episode. Sam was jealous of her. It was clear as day in this episode. Dean listened to his brother huff beside him on the couch. Sam might be annoyed by all of this, but Dean could see it. It’s the same way Sam had been with Benny. This is why Beth had been so hard on Sam and had said the things she did about Sam not being able to loosen his hold unless it was on his terms. She hadn’t been wrong. 

In the next episode, the Sam on the show went through detox . . . Beth was with her Dean the whole time, and then they let Sam out . . . he was totally clean. Cas didn’t let him out early. That was different . . . But the Sam on TV still took off in search of Ruby. The Beth on the show said she wasn’t going to be there when the Dean on the show got back. The Dean on the show was a bit of a dick about it, but that wouldn’t last . . . he wouldn't call her, because he'd think he'd screwed things up permanently, but if she called him, he’d be there in a second.

Just after that, Dean felt the real live Beth hit his arm to get his attention before she pointed at the remote. He handed it to her, and she stopped it, but she didn’t say anything. The Dean at the back of the room did. “Just a warning . . . this ain’t easy to watch, and uh . . . Sam . . . you’re really not gonna like what you see.”

The warning didn’t help. Dean sure as hell wasn't prepared for what he saw. He remembered being in the honeymoon suite waiting for Ruby and Sam, and he remembered Sam letting Ruby go, but that’s about where the similarities between his life and the show ended. Beth was there, and she killed Ruby . . . did not go down well. The fight the Sam and Dean on the TV had been building towards all season finally erupted, and . . . it was a lot worse than the fight Dean’d had with his own brother. 

The Sam on the TV totally took TV Dean out of the fight, and then did something Dean hadn’t thought his brother had it in him to do, but apparently did . . . it wasn’t easy to watch . . . any of it from start to finish . . . the screaming from Beth, the begging from her Dean . . . watching Sam start drinking her blood . . . watching that Dean hand over a way for Sam to find Lilith and let Lucifer out to get Sam away from Beth . . . and then when she was dying . . . the things she and her Dean were saying . . . none of it was easy.

Nobody in the room said anything at first when the episode was over . . . for about 10 seconds, and then Sam stood up and turned to yell at the Dean at the back of the room, saying he’d never do that and he didn’t believe . . . blah, blah, blah. The Dean at the back of the room waited for him to finish and said, “It did happen. Her Sam told me it happened . . . said it’s the moment he lost his brother . . . said he wanted to find Lilith, but really it was because he hated Beth and wanted to get back at his brother for not listening to him about Lilith, about Beth, and about Ruby . . . said to give me an idea of what that was like, Beth used to say he turned her into a giant slurpee, and that’s why he destroyed his universe trying to go back and erase what he did . . . I thought we should call him Sam the Destroyer, and the Purgatory me thought we should call him Sam the Slurpee King. He didn’t like either one.”

Dean laughed. When his brother looked down at him, he shrugged. “What? I like ‘em both . . . After what I just saw, I’m thinking Sam the Slurpee King though.”

The Dean at the back of the room responded, “Wait until you see what he does to the planet. Think you might go for Sam the Destroyer.”

“You two think this is funny?”

What other way was there to look at it? The more Dean saw of this show, the more he thought he and Sam were right to want to distance themselves from one another when they got to Beth’s universe. They’d already destroyed one universe. He wouldn’t let it happen again. Might want to start on that now. “Sam, they’re not our parents.” When his brother looked down at him again, Dean said, “Think that’s why you’re freaking out . . . I mean, they’re our parents, but . . . our parents are dead. Those two little kids Gabriel is babysitting with Rogue . . . they’re their kids, not us. Just like the guy on the TV is you, but he isn’t. I mean, I remember that fight you and me had in that hotel room . . . wasn’t anything like –“

“Yeah, because Beth wasn’t there when you and me fought, but I still choked you out . . . The guy on that show is exactly like you Dean! You can’t tell me you don’t see it, that you’re not sitting there watching what he’s doing and seeing that the way he handles things is exactly the way you would’ve done it.”

“So, you know it's not a lie Gabriel made up to mess with you.” 

Sam slumped and said, “What does that say about me?”

“That it’s a good thing we’re gonna be taking a step back when we get to her universe?”

“Or you two shouldn’t let anything come between you.”

Dean looked at Mary, a woman almost 10 years younger than him, who he felt like he had to parent. “That’s what we did in our universe, and we destroyed it. If it weren’t for the rest of them, we would have, and it took two of their teams to fix it . . . That Cas you see on the screen . . . I met him. He isn’t just some guy on the TV. He meant something to Beth . . . to her daughter . . . the me you see on the screen meant something to both of them . . . even the Sam on the screen meant something to both of them . . . We’re basically watching home movies of their lives, and you and Sam and maybe even John . . . you’re all treating it like it’s mindless entertainment or something you're being forced to do by an archangel, because he didn't like the way you treated his daughter . . . What you're watching matters. They matter . . . That’s what you should be taking away from this . . . They and the people they’ve lost have sacrificed everything they have to help all of us. The least we can do is stop calling them liars, start listening, and not destroy their universe by doing the same damn things we did wrong over and over again in our own universes.”


	121. Sick of Losing

“Do I have to go out there today?”

My Dad went from playing with the kids to looking up at me. “You don’t have to do anything . . . there is a demon milling around outside, who hasn’t left since you kicked him out. Could do something about him if you don’t want to watch the next series today.”

I was putting that off. I was sure that Demon Dean was furious by this point, but all he had to do was knock on the door and say what I needed to hear, and he wouldn’t do it. I didn’t know why. Maybe he thought it would set things back with me, but there’s no way it could make them worse than him being outside all this time. I did have to respect the fact that he’d stuck around. Maybe I’d go see him today . . . depended on what they were watching when I went out there.

Walking down the hall, I tried to listen to what was happening on the screen and heard John say, “How long has this other girl been doing this?” 

I couldn’t hear what Sam had said, but Sam was the one who answered. Standing at the entryway, I caught sight of . . . oh. This was right before Jo shot me. They’d started earlier today. “She was emotional, and I trained with Dean or Cas all the time.” They all looked at me right before their attention went back on the screen as she pulled a gun on me.

_”There is time for us to stop Sam from having to jump in the cage. He’s not supposed to say yes to Lucifer for months. You can afford to choose your battles, but not if you’re dead. I know you know that. You’re feeling panicked, and you’re letting your emotions get the better of you.”_

Still thought it was a reasonable argument. One of the Deans’ hands flew to the top of his head as he realized I was about to take a step forward on the show. “Don’t – “ He looked back at me when she pulled the trigger. “What were you thinking?”

“In that moment?”

“No. Taking a step towards her.”

“That she was my friend.”

His attention went back to the screen, and about 10 seconds later, he said, “Wait. Did she shoot you or not?” I’d just disarmed her and punched her in the nose. I was talking about how she could tell me all about Sam and then I started to collapse. 

“She fucking left you and went to Carthage anyway?”

“Yeah . . . That’s Fate for you.”

“Fate or people doing the wrong thing all over the fucking place . . . You don’t shoot someone, especially someone that is supposed to be a friend and then leave them like that.”

“My Mark could’ve played a factor in it too . . . a lot of factors played into it.”

The next scene cut to Dean and Sam in the car and Dean grabbing his chest and asking Sam which arm went numb when you had a heart attack. It made me smile. The rest of the episode stayed with them until Cas brought Dean to him at Ellen and Jo’s. 

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see Adam, Dean and I at Christmas. Yesterday had been emotional enough for me without adding that . . . maybe I had a demon to go talk to right about now. I started heading towards the door, and the Dean that’d decided to step up and take on the leadershp role around here got up to go with me. “It’s okay . . . stay in the house. It’s warded. I don’t want to lose another one of you.”

“How do you even know he’s –“

“Dad said he’s never left.”

“He’s gonna be pissed.”

“I know.”

“He’ll probably hurt you.”

“I know.”

“Well then why –“

“Because he’s a member of this team, and like it or not, that makes him family . . . and he might be a demon, but he’s not all bad. I just needed some space to figure things out.” Dean slumped a little and glanced over my shoulder towards the door, so I added, “Besides, who is going to stay here and make sure the message gets through to the others?”

With a silent snort, he looked over his shoulder towards the couch. “Think the other me has taken the ball on that one . . . Your Dad’s rebuilding us, isn’t he? Making us stronger, so we can help out when we get you home. I mean, he helped do that with me before he had me watch this, but this seems to be what the other me needed to see.”

“Making you stronger or showing you how strong you really are?” He looked down at me again. I smiled and said, “You two tag teaming back and forth on this seemed to work best yesterday. If I’m not back by the time Death swings by Bobby’s to resurrect the dead, come get me.”

He gave me a subtle nod, so I carried on with the mission I’d set for myself. I needed to set things right with the Dean outside and the demon. I liked both of them. It’s just . . . like everything else it was complicated. I didn’t even get that far. I got the door pulled open, and he was standing right there waiting for me. Used his powers to flick me back into the wall on the other side of the room. “I don’t wanna talk to you.”

Getting to my feet and ignoring the others, I said, “Well, then why were you standing there waiting for me?”

Giving me a devilish grin, he answered, “I knew you’d crack first.”

“So, you’ve spent the last few days playing a one-sided game?”

“No, I . . . wanted to tell you I didn’t want to talk to you.”

“You told me . . . and yet you’re talking to me.”

Looking at the doorframe in frustration, because he still couldn’t come in with the wards, he then leveled his eyes on me and said, “I’m not here to talk, and I’m not here to fuck.”

I smiled briefly and said, “You want to fight me?”

“Yeah, I think I do.”

“Good.”

“What? You can’t be serious. He –“

Looking at Sam I said, “Is a Knight of Hell? I know . . . it’s what I need too.” Pinning my attention back on Demon Dean, I added, “That doesn’t make you change your mind, does it?”

“Not even a little.”

“Dad!” He came out to see what I wanted, caught sight of Demon Dean in the doorway, and rolled his eyes before snapping his fingers and making my angel blade appear in my hand.

“Go have fun.” 

After he snapped his fingers again, I found myself in an empty field with Demon Dean . . . this should be interesting. Or I thought it was going to be until his posture relaxed, and he said, “That was perfect,” before walking up to me, picking me up by the front of a jacket I hadn’t even known my Dad had put on me to keep me from getting cold, and then planting a kiss on me, a hot, passionate, kiss. When he pulled back to look at me, he said, “I did it . . . I didn’t really plan to do it . . . just kind of a spontaneous thing, but I did it. I got your guy out of the way, so I could have you. Didn’t want you to die on me . . . made him a part of my soul . . . There’s more of him here than you think, because I’m not the same as I was before that, but that doesn’t mean he’s not gone . . . that’s what you wanted to know, right?” 

I didn’t really know what to say about that. Mostly, I was still stuck on that kiss and not really sure how I felt about it. I’d thought we were going to fight, but it’s what I’d wanted to know, so I nodded.

“You hate yourself for fucking me?”

I nodded again.

“Hate yourself for thinking about doing it again?”

Another nod.

“Good. Should make it hotter if –“

“I slept with someone else.”

“What?” When I didn’t say anything, he said, “Which one was –“

“Guy in the last universe. You can’t touch him.”

“What guy in the . . . you mean the guy in the church?”

“Yeah.”

He just kind of dropped me and then took a step back in confusion. “I don’t believe you. You wouldn’t –“

“I did. Tell me if I’m lying.”

“How many times?”

“As many times as I could, while I still had him.”

“It was to get back at me for –“

“No, it’s because I liked him . . . a lot . . . and I needed to –“

“But I’m still football right?” 

A massive shock to his system, and there he was . . . now I knew . . . and it could be the demon lying, but I didn’t think it was. A demon wouldn’t say something like that without trying to manipulate me, and he wasn’t . . . he genuinely wanted to know . . . my Dean was in charge as the demon . . . He remembered the MoC Dean’s life, unlike the way that the MoC Dean refused to remember his . . . maybe my Dean hadn’t been able to tell which one was him at first, because he’d gone from being in a bar with his brother to unexpectedly being a demon, but the more he and I had been together when he was a demon, the more my Dean was able to take over. That’s why the demon knew more details of my life than the MoC Dean had. It was probably why there was an extra spark there when I kissed him that hadn’t been there the first time the demon had kissed me.

The demon in front of me now, the one I’d been punishing for the last few days, he had no real idea what that deal with God had entailed, because he hadn’t made that deal, and I’m guessing him not knowing was part of the deal . . . and now he was just saying what I wanted to hear, so I’d stop being mad at him and sleep with him. When he got cured, my Dean disappeared . . . ended up trapped in the MoC’s subconscious . . . was aware of what the MoC was doing . . . but the MoC Dean was in charge. He couldn’t remember my Dean’s life with me, because when he was human, he felt too guilty to remember it . . . just like the Men of Letters Dean had said, but that didn't mean that if the MoC Dean could remember my Dean's life, it'd make a whole lot of difference, because he'd still be in charge, not my Dean. Apparently, all my Dean got was to be a demon and in charge.

Did it mean my Dean was gone? Yes. Certainly, he was gone as Rogue’s father, and in every way that really mattered when it came to making him who he was . . . except for how he felt about me. The MoC Dean couldn’t get me to look at him the way I looked at him when he was a demon . . . maybe because he wasn’t my Dean, and part of me had known the demon was. Who knew? I still didn’t understand the look thing, but I’m guessing it’s what I saw when my Dean looked at me like that. 

I’m also guessing that’s why the MoC Dean never ‘signed’ the contract he kept going on about even though he’d said he did it when he was a demon. Part of him had known my Dean had done all the signing . . . maybe for both of them, but still . . . I . . . I think the Mark of Cain Dean was really screwed up, like really . . . a lot more than I’d thought . . . so much so that there was a lot there he didn’t even know was wrong with him . . . and yet he’d still tried so hard. He wasn’t bad. He was a good man too. It wasn’t right to keep my Dean a demon, so I could have something of him when the MoC didn’t want to be a demon . . . my Dean didn’t either, but the only way I got to see my Dean was this way apparently.

 _Chuck and original Demon Dean you’re both assholes._ It was one way to make sure when we got home, I wouldn’t do something to get that Mark off of Dean and potentially risk releasing Amara some day. It was also a way for Demon Dean to get me not to cure him of being a demon. No Mark, no demon, no my Dean at all . . . and no after life with my Dean either way. Yeah, my Dean was gone, just the same as I thought he was 5 minutes ago . . . I just had to live with him now as something else, someone new, someone the same, all rolled into one. 

I didn’t know how I felt about that either. I think I felt worse, because after watching the show yesterday and seeing what we’d had . . . I hadn’t known we’d had that at the time . . . felt like wasted time I wanted back, but it really was all gone . . . just look at him, a sad, volatile demon probably reading every thought I was thinking, but at the same time . . . it meant my Dean was the one who took a knife for me, who came to get me when I was with Cain, who I hadn’t been able to keep my hands off way too soon after my Dean had disappeared . . . it eased some of the guilt I’d been feeling, but I still didn’t know how I felt about any of this.

Was my Dean still football? Yeah, and he always would be, but I’d thought he was gone, and he was . . . mostly. I’d really like the Men of Letters Dean though . . . he was gone too, or just as inaccessible. They were both alive and inaccessible. I was trying to keep my distance from the other two . . . I needed to grieve. It looked like even if my Dean wasn’t technically gone, gone, I needed to mourn him as a living man. He might be a demon, but the man I’d been watching build a life with me in that show was gone. I needed time to adjust to the idea of that now that I finally had my answer.

“Yeah, you’re still football, Dean.”

“Yeah?”

Oh, this was going to be bad. I nodded. “Remember that after I go find someone to fuck as many times as I can, while I have whoever it is, so I can make us even . . . and when I come back, you’re letting me in that house . . . and then our deal is off. I can kill who I want, when I want, and I’ll start with everyone wearing my face if I see you go near them again.” And just like that, he was gone. Yeah. That’s kind of the way I’d thought it’d go. 

I heard something behind me and without looking dove to the ground a couple of seconds before a knife went sailing over my head. When I looked back, he was really gone this time. I was keeping the knife though. Not sure where he got it, but it was a cool knife. Guessing he didn’t stick around the house waiting for me to open the door every second of every day. Probably stole it then. Holding onto it, I sighed and said, “God, take me back to the others,” and a 10th of a second later, I was laying sprawled out the floor of my bedroom. 

“You’re back sooner than I’d thought you’d be.” 

Placing my head on my arm, I looked at my Dad and said, “I was hoping for a fight . . . didn’t get it. He didn’t take what happened with the Men of Letters Dean well.”

“Well, why’d you tell him?”

“I wanted a fight . . . and to maybe buy me some time to figure out what to do . . . Chuck brought me back. He wants his sister to find us.”

“Wouldn’t be so sure. We’re all here together for a reason. I’m thinking it’s more likely he knew he owed you, so –“

“Come on, Dad . . . wasn’t that. All it will take is for her to get one look at a bunch of Dean Winchesters walking around and a girl with her brother's Mark, and she'll know . . . If this is the last one before we go home . . . maybe he wants her to follow us home, so we can do something about her there . . . not sure what, but . . . if he keeps doing things like that, it won’t take her time to find us. I’d better get them moving on those DVDs . . . then tonight, you and me are coming up with a plan.”

“Already a few steps ahead of you.”

“Doubt it . . . think we can both see where this is going. We’ll just merge our plans into one. Sick of losing. I’m not a loser, and it seems like that’s all I’ve been doing lately.”

"So, we're playing God?"

"Yes, Dad. We're playing God."

"'bout time."


	122. Pie Distraction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is from the point of view of solo-Dean (the one they stopped Crowley from taking to get the First Blade and now the longest surviving Dean on the team).

Dean looked over his shoulder when Beth walked up and sat on the arm of his recliner. She looked okay. Maybe she’d gone straight to her Dad to heal her or maybe she and Demon Dean had been –

_”No. We didn’t do either. I told him about the Men of Letters Dean."_

Dean looked at her. _”And it didn’t turn into a fight?”_

_”Nope. He’s out now whoring around to make us even . . . and oh yeah, the demon is my Dean, or at least he’s when my Dean gets to be in charge.”_

_”So, he’s still gone.”_

_”Yeah, but he said he’ll kill anyone wearing his face if he sees me near them again when he comes back.”_

_”Just as jealous as ever.”_ She glanced at him, and he shrugged before nodding towards the TV. Dean had seen it with her Dean on the show. Wasn’t something Dean had ever thought he’d be, but maybe he would be if he’d put himself through years of torture the way her Dean had to keep her from being connected to him . . . Her Dean had kept her close, but not as close as he wanted, because he didn't want to lose her . . . course he hadn't wanted to lose her to someone else either. Guess now that her Dean was a demon that wouldn’t be a problem anymore. Her Dean wouldn’t feel guilty about being with her . . . ever.

_”Probably right . . . which episode is this?”_

_”Uh, the one with Famine . . . There’s a sex scene in it, so maybe you might want to wait until –“_

“What?”

Dean gave her a look to make her shut up because of the others and thought, _”Just got the other me to stop knowing what you think. Don’t give him a reason –“_

_”Think he still knows how I feel.”_

_”Yeah, whatever . . . at least he’s not doing both anymore.”_

_”Think we were talking about a sex scene . . . guessing shower.”_

_”Uh . . . yeah . . . pretty tame, but you know what’s going to happen.”_

She smiled, while she thought about it. _”Doubt it . . . nothing tame about it, especially when we got out of the shower.”_

_”Stop it . . . or are you trying to get Demon Dean to gank all of us when he gets back.”_

Her smile grew, and he scooted over before nodding towards the spot next to him in the chair. Wasn’t a whole lot of room, but there was enough to fit both of them. _”Who’s trying to get ganked now?”_

_”Got some time before the demon’s done doing whatever he’s doing, and I’m not scared of him anyway. Thinking I might try that trap the Men of Letters guy taught you on him . . . rather have you here than over there near the others. Still not sure about them. That Dean is all right . . . think John is too . . . lookin’ forward to seein’ what John thinks about when he helped raised you . . . but Sam and Mary . . . that ‘not a Michael’s vessels’ thing might be a problem. Who’s side am I on? Seriously? Like I should be on their side because they look like my family.”_

_”Hey, you want pizza?”_

She knew the right way to calm him down. He was starving. _”You buyin’? Little short on cash.”_

_”Was thinking I might get my Dad to make some.”_

Her Dad’s food was pretty amazing and no hassle. _”Yeah, see if he’ll make a pie too . . . make that two . . . then I don’t have to share with the other me.”_

She came back a couple of minutes later, tossed a few pizza boxes on the couch for the others, and came back over with a big meat lovers one for him and a small mushroom pizza for her. “Where’s the pie?”

Beth laughed. “He said only after you’ve finished your lunch first.” Dean shook his head in disappointment, and she said, “No, that’s what he said to me. What kind do you want?”

Uh, what kind . . . what kind . . . there were so many choices. “What kind are you getting?”

“I have no idea what time of year it is, but I’m thinking I’m long overdue for a pumpkin pie.”

“Yeah, that sounds good. Let’s go with that. You’ll have like a slice, right? I can have the rest.”

“Hey, what are you guys talking about? Are you getting pie?” 

Beth looked over her shoulder towards the other Dean with a smile and said, “Yeah, what kind do you want?”

“I have no idea. Never thought I’d get it again . . . now that I can, I haven’t even thought . . . Where are you going to –“

“Same place I went to get the pizzas. My Dad.”

The other Dean didn’t look like he knew what to say to that, so Dean said, “Trust me. His food is awesome.”

Beth looked at both Deans and then said, “Think I know what to do here,” before going back to her room. A minute later, she came back holding a big plate. “These are . . . well, try one . . . got a bunch of different kinds.” 

Dean got up to have a look. The other Dean wasn’t far behind him. They were perfectly formed pies, just miniature . . . apple, cherry, blueberry, pumpkin, pecan, strawberry, rhubarb, blackberry, lemon meringue, key lime, Mississippi mud. He went to pick that one up, and Beth slapped his hand. “That one is mine.”

“Thought you were getting pumpkin.”

“Oh, I am . . . and that one.”

“There’s more than one of both.”

“I know, but that’s the one I wanted.”

Dean smiled briefly before reaching for the other Mississippi mud pie to see what she’d do. She let him have it before looking at the other Dean. That Dean said, “Do we only get one, or –“

“Take as many as you want, just don’t take these two.” She pointed to the ones she wanted and then pointed at two more. “Or those two.” Cherry and blueberry. 

There were only two of each kind. “Are you cutting down the ones we –“ She smiled, and Dean grabbed for both of the apple pies before the other Dean grabbed for the cherry, blueberry and both pecans and then it was a scramble for them to divide up the rest.

Looking down at the stash he was cradling in his arm, Dean said, “He got more than me,” and Beth laughed. 

“No, he didn’t. Trade with him for something if he got 2 of something you want.”

Looking down at his arm again, Dean said, “You wanna trade one of your blackberries for a rhubarb?”

The other Dean grinned and shook his head, and Beth took both rhubarbs before replacing them with the cherry and blueberry she’d taken. Those are the ones he’d wanted anyway. “Thought you liked blueberry and cherry.” 

“I do, but I got the two I really wanted.”

“Was this like some kind of a pie test?”

Beth gave him a sly look before saying, “Nope . . . figured this was about the only thing to take you two’s attention off of watching porn staring me and you in it. Episode is over, pervs. Won’t be happening again for a long time. We had a fight at the end, and in real life, we didn’t see each other for a few months. Then Sam or Adam were cockblocks for months after that.” Then she hopped in Dean’s chair, like she owned it.

“It’s not even soft core . . . I mean, your Dad wouldn’t . . . he doesn’t want us to see –“

The other Dean laughed. “Dude, just . . . I don’t know . . . leave it. Least we got pie out of it.”

Dean looked down at his arm again. “Yeah, think we’ll be getting more pie in the next season.” 

“How much more?”

“A lot more.”


	123. Coming Around to a New Way of Life

_” . . . And who’s to say if you got a version of me back somehow, that he’d be the same? He wouldn’t be. Your fake brother might look like me, but he’d be different and everyone we’ve ever met would be different too, because this life. All of the shitty things that’ve happened in it, all of the mistakes, all of the good things, and the victories we’ve had . . . those are the things that make us what we are, Sam. You go messin’ with that, and nothin’ you make would be the same. What I want is for you to be able to have your normal life after this is all over. Find a girl, settle down, have kids, be a lawyer, whatever it is that you want, and that won’t happen if you keep this up.”_

Sam sat there and watched the Dean on TV and the Sam on TV having a talk that was . . . well, in that moment, he felt like it’d been tailor made for him . . . maybe like it’d been tailor made for all of them. Sam looked over his shoulder at Beth, sharing a chair with the other Dean, not particularly looking cozy, just like a couple of friends. He wouldn't be interrupting anything if he asked her what he was thinking. “Did he know?”

Beth looked at the TV almost proudly and answered, “No . . . he’s not wrong though, huh?”

“Are you sure he didn’t, because –“

“100% . . . Why do you think God chose us to lead this mission out of all the other versions of us out there? We understand all of this better because of the life we lived.”

Seemed like it. Sam turned back to watch the show and saw the Sam on screen continue to discount anything his brother had to say even though Sam thought it was blatantly clear that his brother was right . . . Was he really like that? Probably. He hadn’t listened to his brother when his brother told him not to get rid of his Mark.

_”Nah, I don’t need to. I’ll probably have to chase her around from hunt to hunt, because she won’t want to give it up. Maybe once this is all over she and I . . . I don’t know. We could be good together.”_

Sam watched the TV version of Sam’s reaction to that and shook his head. The TV Dean caught it too and responded. Right there was the chance for the TV Sam to tell him what he’d done, so they could fix it together, but instead the Sam on the show dismissed it and got out of the car. “That’s when he lost his brother.”

Sam’s brother looked at him. “What?”

“I said that’s when he lost his brother. What he did to Beth . . . yeah, the Dean on TV was having a hard time with it, but he still spent most of the season with that Sam, and this . . . this conversation . . . this was his last chance, and he walked away from it.”

Sam wouldn’t let that happen with him . . . at least not anymore. He was going to listen to his brother more and take him up on that offer of taking a step back. He’d already planned on doing that after he remembered the last 2 years of his life, but being around his brother so much the last few days had made Sam’s confidence on that waiver some. 

Taking a step back didn’t mean cutting off all ties. They could still see each other and be brothers. They’d probably appreciate each other more if they didn’t see each other as much and just did their own things, like the Dean on TV had wanted . . . for the Sam on TV to have that normal life, while Dean still hunted. It’s what his brother had been saying since yesterday, wasn’t it? He should listen to him.

By the end of the episode, Sam was convinced of it after seeing what the Sam on TV did. Looking back at Beth again, she didn’t seem too upset to see herself being sold to Crowley on screen, but it didn’t make him feel any better. Beth noticed him looking at her, so he said, “Told you I saved the world by jumping in the cage.”

He’d meant it as a joke, and she took it as one. Smiling, she said, “Wouldn’t have hurt to have halo points though.” 

No, definitely not. “Can’t believe he had that handed to him on a silver platter and still did what he did.”

“Yeah, well, that’s how much his brother meant to him.”

“No. If his brother meant that much to him, he wouldn’t have done what he did. He meant that much to himself.”

Beth’s unsure smile told Sam what he’d needed to know. She’d been worried he would be just like her Sam. He was picking up the right things if she didn’t think he was. Looking at everyone else, Beth said, “You guys started a lot earlier today, so I don’t know if you want to –“

John said, “Thought maybe it was better to get finished with the research on these, so we can figure out what to do with God’s sister.”

“Uh, well . . . I’m thinking that God is waiting for her to notice we’re all here, so we can lead her to my universe . . . All you have to do is to watch these and stay in the house until we’re ready.”

Sam asked, “Ready for what?”

“What my Dad and I are working.”

“What are you working?”

“You have one job. Get ready for my universe, do what I say when the time is right, and let the grown ups play.”

“And you’re one of the grown –“

The Dean sitting with her rolled his eyes and said, “Come on, Sam . . . Mothra versus Godzilla . . . Even Gabriel isn’t one of the grown ups, and he’s 14 billion years old.” 

Sam shook his head. “I’ve seen what that looks –“

Beth quickly said, “I know what you saw happen, but don’t forget . . . we’re all different and the same as our counterparts in other universes because our individual experiences differed . . . the same goes for her.”

“Okay, but why aren’t we moving on any of this if you know -“

The Dean sitting next to Beth said, “We’re watching this, so we can take over for Beth and Gabriel if they don’t make it.“

“If they’re letting God and his sister fight it out, why are they getting involved?“

“She said what your job was, not what hers was . . . They’ve got this, but they need to know we’ll do what they need us to do when they do it.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“Got my own job to do.”

“Yeah? What’s –“

Sam’s brother finally looked at him and said, “If they could tell us they would. They can’t . . . if they do, it might give away their plans, or do you not remember what she was like? We can’t even say her name, or we might give away where we are . . . if she doesn’t already know.”

“How do they expect to –“

“Get around it?” Pointing at Beth, Sam’s brother said, “She’s been practicing.” Then he pointed at the Dean next to her and said, “His job has nothing to do with whatever they’re planning,” and pointing towards the bedroom down the hall, he added, “And Gabriel is Gabriel.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it.”

Sam sighed. “Yeah.”

He wasn’t expecting his brother to roll his eyes. “You’re a part of a team now, Sam, not a duo . . . need to start listening to more people than me.”

 _Starting to get that._ If taking a step back from his brother was going to be a hard transition to make, then changing his mentality to include everyone else here as equal counterparts to his brother was going to be difficult. Interesting time for there to be a knock at the door. Beth got up to get it, and started scratching out the demon wards around the door. Must be Demon Dean.

“What about him? Is he a part of our team now too?”

Glancing in his direction, Dean said, “Him too . . . He took one for the team in the last universe, or doesn’t that count for anything?”

“But he’s –“

The other Dean was watching them from his chair at the back and said, “Sacrificed the most out of all of us, or do you think the guy you’ve been watching wanted to become a demon . . . That’s who he is . . . The original demon made a deal with God to get on the team . . . got rid of Beth’s Dean at the same time. When he’s human, he’s the guy with the Mark . . . just has his memories. When he’s a demon, he’s Beth’s Dean . . . They’re both in there, but she’ll never see her Dean as a human again.”

Oh. That sucked. That really sucked . . . put a whole new twist on everything Sam had been watching. It made it all seem so . . . pointless. Sam heard Demon Dean’s voice come around the door asking, “What’s pointless about it, Sam?” Great. He was going to start doing that crap again. The whole week they’d been babysitting the demon, it’d been doing that, calling them out on things they were thinking that they didn’t want anyone else knowing. “You like that, Sam? Got it from Gabriel. Where is he? Think it’s time for he and I to go bar hopping.”

In annoyance, Sam looked at his brother. “Is he drunk?”

“What if I am, Sammy? You gonna lecture me about it . . . give me a few bitch faces to show you don't approve. I don't care.

Sam whispered even quieter to his brother, “I didn’t think demons could get drunk.”

“Uh, yeah . . . takes a lot.” Sam guessed Dean would know from personal experience, and Cas used to be able to get drunk. It might’ve taken an entire liquor store to get Cas drunk, but he could.

“I talked to the man with the Mark. He remembered being a demon.“

Sam looked at his Mom. She seemed . . . well, like she wanted to get a little more involved than she had been today. She’d known the Dean with the MoC . . . might’ve built a relationship with him. She was looking at the Dean sitting at the back of the room, so that Dean said, “Yeah, cause he was aware of everything happening when her Dean was in charge . . . and before that.”

Beth was ignoring them while she finished marking out demon wards, so Sam asked the Dean sitting at the back. “Why would God do this?”

Finally able to step into the room, Demon Dean said, “Guess God thinks I’m better this way,” before he looked at the TV. “What’d I miss?”


	124. The Thin Line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is from Demon Dean's POV.

Beth rushed past Dean on her way out the door. She wasn’t getting off that easy. “Hey, where ya goin’?”

“Smoke.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Thought you were going to watch –“

Looking over his shoulder at the people sitting in the living room, Dean said, “Already know what happens . . . you guys go on with out us,” before he shuffled Beth out the door. He grinned when she reached for a pack and couldn’t find it. He’d just lifted them out of her pocket. Lighting one, he said, “Want one of mine.”

“Those are mine.”

“Not any more . . . All you’ve gotta do is ask.”

“Can I have one?”

He crumpled them up in his fist before throwing them on the ground at her feet. Didn’t get the reaction he wanted. She just walked off and started going left down the street, so he followed her. “Where ya going?”

“What are you the demon on my shoulder now?”

“Now you think I’m your guy, right? Didn’t he follow you - ”

“Were. You’re not anymore, but you were.”

“What if I wasn’t? What if I –“

“You were.”

“How can you be so sure I was if –“

“I just know.”

“Why don’t I think I am?”

“Because you remember his life with me and the life of the guy with the Mark, but you don’t really give a shit about one life over the other, so neither one really feels like you. You’re just a demon now.”

“Not just a demon though, a special one, right?” She glanced at him, but didn’t slow her pace, so Dean said, “Not a bad gig, Beth . . . if I was your guy, then I don’t have to feel anything about . . . “ What should he say there . . . one that would get her the most. “Julie or any of the other kids that died in my arms . . . don’t care about kids at all, not even Rogue.”

“I know.”

Stopping her by grabbing her arm, Dean yelled, “It’s your fault I’m this way if you don’t like the way I am.”

“And God’s.”

She started walking again, and Dean said, “Where are you going? I’m not done yet.”

“You destroyed my cigarettes. I’m going to get –“

“I hope you get shot.” She stopped walking, so he added, “Nice dodge on the knife I threw-“

“You wanted me to know you were there, or –“

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, then I don’t want a compliment, even a sarcastic one from you.” 

She started walking, and he yelled, “You know what I think? I think I’ve been protecting you. I could stop. Then you won’t care about Rogue either.” If he was her Dean, then he must be the reason this demon thing didn’t trickle on over to her. He guessed maybe he wasn’t protecting him from her . . . well, he was kind of protecting himself . . . whenever she got hurt, it may not do the same thing to him anymore, but he could feel it, and that was annoying. 

“You won’t.”

“How do you know –“

“Because you want me to feel the way I feel right now, and if I weren’t human, I couldn’t.”

She had a point. That reminded him. He caught up to her and said, “Want to hear about the woman I fucked, while I was away.”

“Knock yourself out.”

“I didn’t fuck anyone.” She glanced at him, and he added, “Oh, I didn’t do it for you. I’m not making us even. I want you to feel like the trashy whore you are for what you did, and if things were even, you wouldn’t.” When she kept walking without saying anything, Dean said, “Cause that’s what you are, right? I mean, you fucked me, and you didn’t know until today I was him, so you could’ve been fucking the wrong guy just –“

“I didn’t though, did I?”

No, he guessed not, but . . . “You would’ve fucked the cured me if he hadn’t put up road blocks . . . Face it. You’re a whore. Just didn’t let yourself be what you are until you thought I was dead . . . finally got rid of me, and you ran with it.” All he got that time was a sigh for his efforts, so he grabbed her arm again and yelled, “What the hell’s wrong with you? You’re supposed to fight with me more than this.”

“Why? Do you think you’re wrong?”

“No! But you’re supposed to think I am.”

“I’m not supposed to do anything except live and die, Dean . . . Who knows? Maybe you’ll get your wish soon enough.” Then she walked off.

“What wish?”

“Me dead.”

Oh. “Good. Can’t wait to never have to see you again.”

“Yeah, you following me everywhere really says that.”

“I’m not giving you what you want.”

“What’s that?”

“For me to fuck off and leave you alone. That’s what you really want, but there is nowhere on the face of the planet, I won’t be able to find you.”

“So, you are the demon on my shoulder.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.” He waited for her to come back out of the store with another pack of cigarettes, and said, “You didn’t get shot.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

She lit her cigarette, and he said, “You’re not sorry.”

“You don’t know what I am.”

No, he didn’t. She’d been blocking him for days. He had no idea what she was thinking. “I could start hate fucking you . . . see if that makes a difference.”

“Right. Cause you thought me screwing a demon is why I got shot . . . except I told you it was –“

“From your Mark . . . I could spar with you to make you have to tap into your soul, and then hate fuck you, so you get shot.”

“Why don’t you just kill me, Dean?”

“Already tried. Didn’t work.”

“Oh, you mean that half-hearted attempt earlier.”

“I want you to suffer.”

“Why?”

She thought it was because she hurt him, and if she hurt him, then it meant he felt something for her. He didn’t have to know what she was thinking to know that’s why she was pushing this now. He couldn’t be hurt. One of the perks of being a demon. He wasn’t going to bend down to her height. He wasn’t going to do anything for her ever again, but he wanted her to know he meant what he was about to say. PIcking her up by the front of her jacket, so she’d be at his height, he looked her dead in the eye, and said, “Because I hate you . . . my life was crap before we met, but it got so much worse after you showed up.”

“I thought you were good with being a demon.“

“I am. Probably the first thing you’ve gotten right since I met you. You should’ve stayed in Heaven . . . I would’ve been better off if you had. Our planet would’ve been better off if you had. And you had an out. You could’ve sucked it up, told Michael everything and then let him wipe you out . . . but you didn’t, and you brought all of us down with you.” Then he dropped her and teleported back to the house. If they were watching his old life, he wanted to point out all the ways she’d ruined it.


	125. A Reminder

I came back half an hour later. It’d started to rain . . . felt like walking around in it. Reminded me of when I first got to Earth, I guess . . . I wasn’t trying to think about that. I just was. I still liked the rain. 

I climbed in a window at the back of the house and walked to my spot at the back of the room, so as not to disturb anyone. Glancing at the TV, I saw myself clearing an empty dark house . . . probably when I went to get Ben. Everyone was watching, the lights were out . . . it was quiet. Too quiet? Demon Dean didn’t kill them did he? I looked at the light from the TV reflecting off of a couple of their faces . . . their eyes were open. Didn’t necessarily mean anything. Most people died with their eyes open . . . had to wait for someone to blink, and . . . there it was.

I looked for Demon Dean . . . He was at the back . . . must’ve stolen the solo-Dean’s chair. He was being quiet, just like the rest of them. Figured he’d been in here telling everyone how much I’d fucked things up. Maybe he was taking notes and waiting to tell me later . . . or after the episode was over, he’d tell everyone. I guess we’d find out. 

_”I’m sorry. I’ll make sure your son is safe.”_

So far, I’d been able to keep my promise to Lisa. Let’s hope I could continue to keep it. The Beth on TV left her room and a shadow moved across the wall when she was on the stairs, just the way I remembered it happening, and then I froze, saw a Croat walk past the window and then rushed down the stairs and stopped wasting time getting to the basement. I was careful in the basement, but spotted the barrel in the back and went straight to it. 

_”Ben? You in there? It’s Beth . . . You’d better not jump out and bite me if I open this up.”_

The Beth on TV started trying to get the barrel top off. She did, and the camera panned down onto Ben. He looked so small there . . . He’d grown up so much in the last few years. Might’ve made me tear up a little thinking about that. 

_”Ben, I’m Beth. You ready to get out of here?”_

Then the scene cut to the camp. Dean was talking to Stan. Must’ve been after the camp had held off the first batch of Croats. Stan was locked up. He and Dean were drinking on opposite sides of a quarantine fence. Rufus came back to tell Dean the area was clear of Croats, so Dean gave him some instructions, and then went back to Stan. Dean sat down across from him the way he’d been before Rufus got there, and . . . yeah, you could tell Stan had been infected. 

Dean kept talking to him, and secretly got his gun in his hand . . . waited . . . let Stan say a few more things about his family and then looked to his right, like he’d heard something. Stan looked too, and Dean lifted his hand and pulled the trigger . . . shot him right through the temple . . . and then Dean just kind of sat there for about 10 seconds, staring at Stan’s body before he got up and went to go tell the others . . . Then the scene cut again.

Now I was with Ben in the kitchen asking him about the keys to his Mom’s car. He took off to get them. I followed, aimed my gun at the Croat in the corner, while putting my hand out for Ben, shot the Croat and the rest of the episode stayed with me and getting Ben out of Cicero. It played out exactly the way I remembered it. This whole thing . . . the show . . . felt like my life flashing before my eyes, if I’m totally honest. Maybe I should pay more attention to it if that’s what it was.

I took a seat on the floor against the back wall. I was hidden by the shadows. If anyone knew I was here, they weren’t acknowledging it. That’s the way I preferred it. From here I could stay hidden and still see the screen perfectly.

The next episode started with Ben and I not really getting along all that well on the drive back to Wisconsin. Then it was edited to cut out all of the silent hours of driving that followed that, because the next scene was of us running out of gas . . . and the struggle to get Ben out of the car. Eventually, he started following me after my bluff, and that’s when I noticed I wasn’t the only one hiding at the back. 

Kid Dean was sitting in the opposite corner watching the entire thing. Should I let him know I’d heard him grumble about Ben or not? I hadn’t heard what he’d said, but I’d heard him. It was kind of my responsibility to make sure he didn’t watch things like this, wasn’t it? He was entirely too young to . . . you know what? It was his parent’s job, not mine . . . If he was still there by the time I got to the farm house on the TV show, I’d kick him out. Apparently, this was a Beth-centric episode, because it never cut away from Ben and me . . . there was very little dialogue.

Just before Ben and I got to the farmhouse, I looked at kid Dean and quietly whispered, “Hey.” He glanced at me, so I nodded towards his bedroom down the hall. Shake of his head. Okay, then . . . I put my hands up to signal I wanted him to close his eyes. He did it, but was peeking through, so I crawled over to him, and pulled him into my lap, so I could hold him and put my hands over his eyes. I wanted to see this . . . this change everyone always said came over me.

The wind picked up . . . compliments of my Dad trying to get me to rethink this decision and then to provide cover when I got on the porch. The camera didn’t show you what I saw through the window. It showed my reaction. I wonder if this is the way my Dad saw me, because he saw the entire thing. By the time I stood up from my crouch on screen, I looked . . . well, to be honest, I looked like an angel . . . an emotionless, avenging angel . . . Cas described it to me that way once . . . said I was like an avenging angel on the wendigo farm. He wasn’t wrong if this is the way I’d looked then.

I kicked open the door, took out the first man in about 2 seconds, the next two about 5 seconds after that, and then the two who were left . . . I’d say I spent about 30 seconds on both of them, but they were an extraordinarily bloody 30 seconds. I glanced down at kid Dean. My hands were still covering his eyes . . . guess that was good. Not only because of what I’d done, but because of why I’d done it . . . By the time I got to the kids, I looked like me again and untied them, but you could see their Mom in the background from the moment I came into the room. Didn’t get a close up of her until we were walking past . . . she looked exactly the way I remembered . . . one of those moments you can never scrub out of your mind once you see it. I wondered if it was the same for the others watching or if it only happened that way for me, because I’d seen it live and in person.

I took the kids outside, and all of this was the same as I remembered it . . . me thinking it was two more of the gang, but then it cut to the men in the house, and there was my Dean again. He was taking in the carnage. Adam was too. Adam seemed to know I’d done this. Dean didn’t. He started calling for me in a panick and the look on his face when he heard my voice . . . the way he looked when he wrapped me up in his arms . . . I glanced at Demon Dean. I couldn’t see his face from this angle. Probably better if I couldn’t.

I was struggling with what he’d said. I mean I knew why he’d said it. I’d hurt him, but . . . I wondered how much truth there was to what he’d said . . . not the hating me part. The way my Dean had felt about me making his life worse. Maybe he hadn’t let himself think that, but I wondered if it’d been there somewhere, lingering in the background, but he’d just loved me too much to care about it. 

The next scene after Dean and Adam met the kids was one that happened between Adam and Dean. I was asleep in the back with the kids. Adam was worried about the bodies I’d left behind. He never let me know what he’d thought, so this was the first time I was hearing it. Dean’s response? Total unadulterated defense of my actions even though he hadn’t been there . . . He’d had my back in hunting and in life.

The next episode, well, the next episode . . . guessing I should’ve gotten some pies for the guys, but I couldn’t be bothered. I went to close kid Dean’s eyes again, and he was asleep. Hadn’t even noticed he’d curled up to sleep against my chest. I guess the sex stuff wasn’t too bad . . . mostly a lot of kissing and then it cut away to the next morning at breakfast. Dean and I had our fight about me going back out. I left, and he and Adam . . . wow. Those first couple of days after I’d left must not have been a whole lot of fun for everyone else at the camp . . . and then Adam decided to do something about it . . . totally ratted me out on that rugarue hunt. Never knew who did that. Always just assumed it’d been Cas. That’s not what set Dean off though. 

_”I guess I was wrong about you. Maybe you don’t see her as anything more than a thing to use, like Sam did. Since Beth obviously doesn’t have anyone else looking out for her, I’ll do it and say I think that if you want a quick lay, you should go find someone else. I’m sure one of the other women around here would be up for it . . . maybe when we get more survivors it’ll improve Beth’s odds too . . . or maybe she doesn’t need them. Maybe she’s out there with Stephen right now –“_

Uh, that was pretty mortifying. First of all, I can’t believe Adam said that. Quick lay? The night before I left was the first time in . . . well, since the damn Famine hunt . . . and I guess, that’s why Dean had been pissed off before I left. For some reason, he’d thought Stephen was a threat. Their fight was pretty intense, but not one where you thought either would actually do anything to really hurt the other the way Sam and Dean’s fight had been in that hotel room. It was more like it was something they needed to get out of their system, and then as soon as they had, they were okay and making jokes. That might be the first time I’d wondered how John was taking the idea of having another kid with a woman who wasn’t Mary. I bet that was pretty awkward. 

The next scene cut to me finding Carrie, and the more of this I watched, the more I wanted to go home. I missed my family at home. I needed them more than I’d ever needed them . . . maybe more than they’d ever needed me . . . I had to be strong enough to do what needed to be done . . . for them . . . for my daughter . . . and hope that things worked out in the end . . . that’s all I really had . . . hope that they would, no guarantees. I guess there are never any guarantees in life. My Dad taught me that . . . sometimes what you get is better than what you want and sometimes it’s worse, but it’s what you get and you have to make the best of it . . . even if it’s a pair of ballerina skates.


	126. Sometimes Living Is the Harder Thing to Do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is from the point of view of solo-Dean (the one they stopped Crowley from taking to get the First Blade and now the longest surviving Dean on the team).

Dean knocked on Beth’s door. “Hey, just wondering if you’re –“

Looking back at Rogue, Beth said, “Not for a while. We’re watching Rogue’s movies.” 

Yeah, he knew she spent the mornings in here with Rogue. She was just spending more time in here today than normal. Wondered why . . . if there were problems with Demon Dean being here, then he could kick Demon Dean out again and she could come back out. “What kind of movies?”

“Uh, of the 3 months her Dad had her after she was born.” 

Kind of skipped over those three months on the other show. “There weren’t any hunts?“

Beth shook her head.

“Heavy drinking?”

She smiled and shook her head before opening the door a little further, so he could come in. This room was the most warded room in the entire house. Angel when Gabriel was away, demon, everything you could possibly think of warding against had been warded against. He noticed the demon wards were still up. Demon Dean was not allowed in here.

When Rogue saw him, she pointed at the TV and said, “Dad.” Sitting next to her, Dean took a look. Yeah, there was her Dad being a dad. Didn’t look like a hunter at all . . . just a guy trying to get his daughter to go back to sleep in the middle of the night. Pointing at the baby, Rogue whispered, “Me.”

“No . . . She’s too small to be you.” 

Rogue shook her head with a smile that was identical to Beth’s and touched the screen. “Me.”

“Yeah? What’s your Dad doing now?” 

She looked at the screen and touched her Dad’s face. “Sing.”

Dean looked back at Beth to see if he heard that right, and she nodded towards the TV. The Dean on the TV picked up a guitar from the corner of the room and . . . well, he wasn’t singing, but he was playing it . . . kind of all right and humming. “What’s he –“

“Atmosphere . . . by Joy Division.”

“Where’d he get the guitar?”

“I don’t know. I never knew about any of this. I’m not even sure Sam did. I’m looking for it when I get home.”

“Why doesn’t he just play it on the record player I see back there?”

“Earlier in the day he put some of my records on for her, and she seemed pretty happy about this song . . . He asked her if she was trying to tell him something, and then he spent the rest of the afternoon practicing on the beanbag couch with her sitting next to him . . . It’s just 2 cords throughout the entire song, but he kept playing the record over and over again, while he tried to figure out the rhythm . . . unless he was going to get her something to eat or changing her. All he did was spend every waking moment with her, so he had time on his hands, I guess.”

“Or he wanted her to know her Mom . . . They’re your favorite band, right?”

“Toss up between them and the Pixies.”

“You have your Dad make any of these up for you?” 

“No. You think I should?”

Looking back at Beth, Dean said, “Maybe . . . who knows how long this will take, and if your Dad is going with you, it’ll just be me and her.”

“And the Men of Letters Dean.”

Yeah, but not her Mom and Dad. “You got something made up for Cas too.”

Crouching next to Dean, Beth said, “You’re acting like you guys won’t be back. You will be . . . won’t take that long.”

“Yeah, but what if we come back when it’s over, and you’re not there.”

“Be back?” Dean looked down at a sad and worried Rogue as she crawled into his lap and then at Beth, like ‘see?’ 

She’d talked him out of going with her, because she wanted him to stay with Rogue, but it put him in an awkward position, because he’d promised Rogue, he’d protect her Mom. Beth smiled at what he was thinking. “I’ll be there.” 

“Promise me you will.” He had no idea what she was planning, but he knew what keeping promises meant to her.

Looking down at Rogue, she said, “You’re the one who is going to work, so I’ll have to wait for you to be back.”

Rogue looked from Beth to Dean to see what he thought about it and then said, “I work?”

Smiling, Dean said, “Yeah . . . you and me are going to work . . . not today though. The grown ups need to finish doing their research.” He glanced at Beth and added, “And your Mom is going to promise me she’ll be there when we get back.”

“I’ll try . . . can’t account for everything.”

“Not good enough.”

Beth’s eyes scanned his face for a couple of seconds, and then she said, “You’ll be great with her.” Before he could protest her lack of promise, her eyebrows arched, like she wasn’t wasn’t finished. “But I promise I’ll be there . . . She needs you and me. I know that . . . I'm just making sure she’s safe if the worst happens. The bunker there is safe. The universe there is safe . . . And you won’t be there alone.”

“Yeah, Men of Letters Dean . . . is he as nerdy as you make him sound?”

“He’s a good guy, and he knows all kinds of things you don’t. You were living in that bunker for a year. He’s lived in it his whole life, knows it top to bottom . . . and there are a lot of things he doesn’t know about hunting . . . you’ll make a good team . . . But that’s not who I was talking about. I meant Chuck. He’ll be there too.”

“Chuck? You mean, he’s not –“

“That’s all I can say, but he’ll keep that universe safe . . . hidden . . . the way he’s been keeping mine hidden all this time.”

“Why take God's sister to your universe then?”

Looking down, Beth said, “Less collateral damage if things go wrong.” Oh. He guessed there were fewer people there than anywhere else, but that didn’t make it right. 

“You’re okay with that?”

Beth took a deep breath and then shook her head. “No. I’m not. That’s why I’m going to do whatever I have to do to keep things from going wrong.”

"You promised you'd be there when I get there."

"I know."

“Why can’t we just stop it here the way we’ve stopped it everywhere else?”

Sitting next to him, Beth said, “Honestly, I think none of us had anything to do with her being released here. I think there is absolutely no way for us to find out who did, because it could be anyone on the planet.”

So, they finally found a universe where God’s sister wouldn’t be released because of anything he and Sam did. It made him wonder who it was. “But maybe we don’t need to know who it was. What if we got rid of the things that are needed to do it?” 

“So, like start taking out witches?” 

“Well, yeah . . . I’m guessing you already had your Dad send you to check for the Book of the Damned?” She nodded, and he smiled briefly. He wondered how much of her time in here with her daughter was time she was using as a cover to do things on her own, while the rest of them were occupied doing something else. “We could start at the top and get rid of the witches that are good enough to remove the Mark of Cain.” 

“Yeah, but a genocide like that seems wrong. What if –“

“The witches in this universe or the kids in yours Beth.”

“It still seems wrong.”

“But what if a good witch goes bad? Think it has to be all of them.”

“Or until we kill the right one to jump home.”

Yeah, that worked for him. “What if that’s why we’re all here? More hands to kill more witches.” 

“I wouldn’t get my hopes up. I think God has this planned a certain way, and we're running out of time before she finds us, so –“

“What if it’s training for that problem you have in New Orleans . . . It seems like your last two universes have been.”

She looked like she hadn’t even thought of that and a little sadder than he was expecting. Might be where Rogue got that look from too. “So, you don't think we’re going home next?” 

“I don’t know, Beth . . . I mean, why train for witches if you weren’t going home soon?” 

“Maybe.” 

She still thought it was more complicated than that. “I think maybe . . . and I’m just throwing this out there, but maybe it’s easier to believe you have to sacrifice yourself than it is to know that you’re going to have to live after everything you’ve lost, and I get that. Sometimes living is the harder thing to do.” She ducked her head, and he guessed he’d made his point, so he changed the subject. “So, uh, as far as witches go, I’m guessing we’ll start with this Rowena you talked about and go from there.”


	127. Becoming Part of a Team

_Oh. My. God._ Sam watched a version of himself directing his demons on how to torture the Dean on TV. Black eyes, just like at the devil’s gate. Demon voice, just like at the devil’s gate. He’d hated the devil’s gate episode . . . except for the part when the Dean on TV turn into a proficient hellhound-killing machine. He’d loved seeing that . . . Hadn’t really liked seeing Dean get killed in the episode after that, but he’d figured that Dean would be back. Dean always came back. His brother sitting next to him was a testament to that.

But this . . . this was too much. It was awful. Blood and tissue and . . . Sam couldn’t even watch it, because it was his brother up there on the screen. He just couldn’t. He had to look at the floor, and then the Sam on TV pulled out two victims to kill in front of Dean . . . And one of them was the girl that the Dean on TV had bonded with when they were doing recon of the camp. Sam had really liked that girl. He could see why Dean had too . . . He couldn’t really watch when she was dying either . . . or he couldn’t until he heard the things the Dean on TV was saying to her. Looking up . . . It may not be his brother, but his brother had it in him to do that while being surrounded by pure evil and barely alive . . . for someone else, his brother could do that, and it made Sam incredibly proud of him.

The Sam on TV cut Dean’s tattoo himself and was saying he was going to have Dean possessed after all of that. Sam found himself hoping that Beth got there in time. Thankfully, she did. She had Cas blow the doors in for her and became that . . . Sam wasn’t even sure how to describe what she was when she looked like that . . . not a monster . . . not a nephilim . . . a . . . he didn’t know what. Someone you’d want on your side anyway, and she destroyed the Sam on TV . . . Sam wasn’t sure what to think when he heard his Dad mutter, “She should’ve killed him then.” 

That might’ve been the most awkward moment of this entire thing so far, but it was forgotten as she went on to kill off or trap the rest of the demons in the room. She was even ready for the one hiding in the other room, and then the demon that’d done the worst things to the Dean . . . she saved that one for last . . . somehow she’d known, just like she’d known with those men on the wendigo farm, and to be honest . . . that’d been a pretty hard episode to watch. Sam was just as glad to see she’d rid the world of men like that as he was anything else he’d seen she and Dean do in the rest of the season.

After she killed that demon, she went to find the Sam on TV . . . dragged him out from under a desk and everything. Sam and his brother both sat forward when she was delivering her verdict. If ever there was a time that she looked like an archangel’s daughter, a warrior for God, whatever you want to call it . . . it was in that moment . . . and then she handed off Lucifer’s blade to her Dad and went over to Dean. Cas must’ve healed him, but Sam hadn’t noticed, because he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off of Beth and Sam in the middle of the room.

By the time she got to Dean, she was herself, but still in control, and at the same time came across as comforting. She and Dean did that weird thing they did where they didn’t have to talk . . . she did, but he didn’t this time . . . or he didn’t at first. Then there was some pretty heart-wrenching back and forth before Beth gave her reason for keeping that Sam alive. Sam wasn’t so sure about there being any good in that Sam. 

If it’d been him, he would’ve killed her Sam. Maybe he thought his Dad was right . . . except Sam could kind of see her point when it came to that Sam going to Hell and coming back, because let’s face it. That guy was smart. He could’ve found a way back out in almost no time. That would’ve been worse for everyone. If she killed that Sam on this mission, then Sam was glad they’d never have to worry about seeing that Sam when they got to her universe.

_”Say it, so I know you understand.”_

_”You’re going, but you’re not leaving me.”_

Sam thought that maybe in that moment, the Dean and Beth on TV had never been quite so in sync. When the episode was over, Sam heard Demon Dean get up from the back and felt himself tense out of instinct more than anything. Demon Dean had been back there last night too, and having him behind them made Sam uncomfortable, but he’d forgotten about him, because he’d been so quiet. Hadn’t said a word the entire time . . . he’d just been sitting back there, angry, dark, and brooding, a stark contrast to the annoying, smart aleck demon, Sam had gotten to know.

It was John’s turn to put in the next DVD, so Sam used to the time to ask his brother what was going on with Demon Dean. “How the hell am I supposed to know? He’s pissed off about something, probably to do with Beth . . . just stay out of his way for now.”

That sounded like pretty solid advice. He’d take the annoying demon over –

“Uh, what are we supposed to do when he does that? Just stay out of his way?” 

They both got to their feet as Demon Dean continued to try and break down Beth’s bedroom door. Beth opened the door and stepped past the warding. She was there one second, and then Demon Dean put his hand on her shoulder, and they were gone the next. “Did he just –“

“Teleport them somewhere else? Yeah.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do about it?”

Sam looked towards the direction of Beth’s room when he heard the other Dean say, “Start looking for Rowena . . . We’re running out of time. He can control the Mark letting God’s sister know where he is, but I’m guessing it gets a whole lot harder to do when he’s pissed off.”

Uh, okay. “I thought we were waiting for –“

Handing him a laptop, the other Dean said, “My job is to protect Rogue and her mother . . . your job is to do what I say. Start looking for Rowena, Sam.”

“Uh, she’s probably still overseas. I’m not sure –“

“Well, it’s a good thing we have an archangel on standby who can take you four there, isn’t it? Find her, and if killing her doesn’t work, then start hunting down any other witches that might be able to remove the Mark.”

“How does that protect Beth? He just took her who knows where to do who knows what.” See. Sam wasn’t the only one with questions. His brother had them too.

“Trust me. It does. And you can’t waste time with the witches. They can't know you're there. Don't let them talk to you. Don't give them a chance to fight back. Just go in, kill them, and get out as fast as possible.”

Sam flipped open the laptop and said, “Okay, but with Rowena . . . if we’re going to kill her . . . it’ll take a witch killing brew . . . Do you know –“

The other Dean held up a tranquilizer gun and a box saying, “The tranq darts in here should do the trick. I checked with Beth. It’s the same recipe I’ve used. I know it works.” 

Probably meant it was the same one Sam knew. “How many tranq darts are there?”

“10. She’s never had to use them. Just keeps them in her weapons bag in case she does.”

“Is that enough?” 

Sam glanced in John’s direction. “It should only take one per witch, but I don’t know how many more I’m looking for here.”

The other Dean answered Sam's unspoken question. “Not sure. We’re going to start with Rowena and go down the line. Can’t be more than about 10 that could pull of being able to remove the Mark, right?”

Sam didn’t know. He guessed they’d find out. It took him about ten minutes to find Rowena in Paris, and the first thing John did was question him about it. “You’re sure?” 

That was so annoying. Of course he was sure. He knew what he was doing. “Upscale hotels going from Berlin to Barcelona, Madrid . . . dead bellhops along the way. It’s her M.O. The alias she used in Berlin is in Paris.”

John looked at the laptop to see the hotel. “Okay. Your brother and I will go there. You stay here and -“

“John, I’m not letting you go there on your own. I –“

John snorted and turned to look at Mary. “Think I've got this covered. We need to split up. They know what she looks like, so one of them needs to come with me. I’m guessing Sam will know the names of more. You stay with him until he finds them. By the time he finds the one after that, we should be back, and then me and Dean will find that one.”

Mary got a look on her face that Sam recognized from his brother. This was going to take forever if they were going to argue about it, so Sam said, “He’s right. Dean . . . any Dean is the best at what he does. Any one of them is capable of doing what you’ve been watching the last few days . . . and your husband’s no push over either. Might not seem like it now, but he’s the one who taught us everything we know.”

One of the Deans must’ve prayed to Gabriel, because he was there a couple of seconds later. Without them even telling him his plan, Gabriel knew what it was. "Round trip to Paris for two." Looking back at the Dean holding Rogue, Gabriel added, “Knew there was a reason you were my horse to back . . . just know that there are back up plans for a reason.”

That Dean nodded, because that apparently meant something to him, and then Gabriel said he’d go with the Rowena team to get this done faster. As soon as they were gone, Mary shook her head and sat next to Sam. “You have any idea who we’re looking for next?”

“Uh . . . anyone on the Grand Coven. I think Katja would be a good way to go. She’s overseas too.”

“And who are Rowena and Katja.”

“Uh, well . . . Rowena is Crowley’s mother and Katja . . . do you have Hanzel and Gretel in –“

She threw him a look, so he smiled and said, “Yeah, well, she’s the witch in that. I think she’s mostly concerned with eating children, but she’s powerful, and I think she’ll be able to give us more on the Grand Coven.”

“Try Olivette too . . . and a Nadia and Letitia something.”

Sam looked back at the Dean holding Rogue, and that Dean shrugged. “What? Beth and I were making a list when Cujo came off his leash.”

“Nadia . . . I know the one you’re talking about. Supposedly she died in 1956.“

“That’s what Beth said, but we were thinking that we’re not the reason the Mark happened or was removed in this universe, so maybe she didn’t die.”

“Wait, so you think maybe someone decided to remove Cain’s Mark for kicks?”

“Maybe.”

“You been researching this much?”

“Today, but what we’ve found seems to back it up.”

Looking back down at his laptop, Sam said, “What about the Book of the –“

“It’s not where it should be here.”

“Well, then why don’t Mary and I go back to 1956? Maybe the Men of Letters didn’t get Nadia’s codex when they killed her. That’s what you need to translate the Book of the Damned.”

“IF they killed her . . . take her out anyway to be on the safe side.” 

“Not sure how to find her when we get there.”

Mary rolled her eyes and said, “We’ll try scrying for her or using a tracking spell. It’s what we do in my time to find what we’re hunting. Is everything you do on computer now?”

Sam laughed. “Not everything, but a lot of it. Think maybe it’s a good idea to start being less reliant on them if they don’t have them in Beth’s universe anymore . . . Okay, how about this? We’ll go get another tranquilizer gun, take half of the tranq darts, and while we’re doing that, the other Dean can find Beth’s time spell stuff, so we can go when we get back.”

Plan in place . . . Sam felt pretty good about all of this. Maybe working as part of a team wouldn’t be so bad.


	128. Be Careful What You Wish For

Dean let Beth go. He didn’t know where they were, and he wasn’t sure why he just did that. He was sick of being around the others; sick of her spending all her time in the house and then her room when she let him in the house; and sick of being on this mission. Never should’ve signed up to do it. 

“What the hell were you doing in there all day?”

“Showing Rogue –“

Dean started pacing. “Rogue, Rogue, Rogue . . . everything is about her, huh?” Beth didn’t say anything. She was supposed to say something. He took a step towards her to invade her space . . . she held her ground. There was still something in there that resembled fight. “Do you not care enough to fight with me anymore?” He didn’t know why he said that, and he didn’t like the way she relaxed and looked like she felt sorry for him. Turning in disgust, he went back to pacing and said, “Don’t flatter yourself.”

He didn’t know what to say to her now that he had her here. And what came out next definitely hadn’t been on his agenda. “You’re going, but you’re not leaving me.”

“Uh . . . I don’t know -”

“You made me say that to you once . . . I just fucking saw it.” Turning to look at her, he said, “Is that what I should’ve made you say?”

“What?”

Spreading his arms and looking down at his body before he looked back up at her, Dean said, “I’m gone, but I didn’t leave you.”

“I don’t understand what me saying that –“

“If you’d said it before then I’d know if you knew you did something wrong.”

“You don’t know the difference between right and wrong. You’re –“

“You do, and I’m not a moron. I remember what I used to think was wrong. I just don’t care about it anymore.”

“Then why does it matter now?”

“Cause I need to know how much I should punish you . . . You’re mine, Beth . . . not theirs . . . thought I was supposed to be yours. I mean I gave you everything I had . . . Everything . . . You name it, and I gave it up for you.” He remembered the things on that show happening, but he couldn’t feel the way that guy did anymore, so he didn’t understand why he’d done it. He just knew he had.

“What do you mean by punish? Are you going to kill everyone left that means anything to me or –“

“You can do better than that . . . what else ya got?”

She exhaled a sad laugh and looked away from him to try and blink back some tears. “I, uh . . . I don’t know Dean . . . can’t deliver your own sentence. Defeats the purpose . . . but whatever it is should stay with me . . . the others around me aren’t at fault.”

“I could kill you here, so you have to stay here when everyone else goes back to your universe. Then you’d never see them again.”

Biting her bottom lip before looking up at Dean, Beth nodded. “You could.” 

“Nah, I don’t wanna do that.” What was the point in her suffering if he couldn’t see it?

“Might not be up to you.”

“Well, then I’ll keep you alive, so you have to –“

“Still may not be up to you.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I won’t live forever, so –“

“Nothing can get past me, not even reapers. I’ll just kill them all, and –“

“Might not be up to either of us.”

“Well, fine, I’ll kill Death, and –“ She shook her head. “What, you don’t think I will?”

“I think there are things out there more powerful than you.” 

She looked past him, so he turned, and his posture went rigid. “How long has she been there?”

“Long enough.”

“Why didn’t I know?”

“She’s probably why you calmed down.”

Fighting against what his head told him to do, his instincts made him take a defensive position in front of Beth, but Beth put her hand on his arm and stepped around him. “You don’t have to do that for me, Dean. You never did.” Looking at the woman in black, she said, “Hello, Amara.”

Amara looked from Dean to Beth, and her eyebrow arched. “Universes?”

“Yeah, I mean, it’s the only way Dean could have your Mark with you standing there. If he weren’t from somewhere else, you’d be locked away.“

“So, I am also imprisoned elsewhere.”

“Yeah, my universe.”

“You wear my brother’s Mark.”

“I do.”

“That is why I am not dead even though I believed I killed him . . . He has been playing games.” 

“Yes . . . There’s not a chance that you got it out of your system when you thought you killed him is there? I mean, you didn’t think he was dead and then feel sad about it, did you?”

Amara looked from Beth to Dean and said, “She has betrayed you . . . If you were to kill her, it wouldn’t be enough, would it?” Dean didn’t know. He didn’t really want to be brought into this. “But you just said that you want her to suffer . . . forever, correct?” 

_Uhh, did I say that?_

“Yes, you did.”

“It was a . . . figure of speech?”

“Maybe, but it’s one you meant.” She looked back at Beth and said, “What did you do to betray him?”

“I betrayed his trust in the worst possible way, and it’s my fault he’s imprisoned in that body the way he is now too.”

What? Dean quickly looked at the back of Beth’s head. “Shut up, Beth.” Directing his attention back on Amara, he said, “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about . . . She didn’t do anything . . . She did what she thought was right. And she thought I was –“

Circling Beth, Amara said, “My brother did what he thought was right . . . and I still ended up imprisoned.” 

“But that’s not . . . she didn’t –“ 

Amara flicked her hand in Dean’s direction and said, “I’ve heard enough.” It silenced him immediately. “Do you want to die, Beth?”

“More than anything. I’m sure you can see past the shiny parts of my soul . . . the damage . . . I’m tired. If you wipe me out, fine . . . if not . . . well, I guess I’ll have to get used to Heaven. Rather be there than on Earth anymore, and I’d rather be nowhere than either place.” 

What the fuck was she doing? “And that’s what my brother is counting on, is it?”

Beth’s eyes followed Amara. “What? I don’t know what you –“

“Oh, I think you do.” Placing her hand on Beth’s forehead, Amara said, “Let’s make sure that cage stays locked,” before they were enveloped in a thick dark fog.

He still couldn’t move. _”Beth!"_

Walking out of the fog alone . . . Amara came up to him and said, “Now what should we do with you?”


	129. Homecoming

Well, that went unexpectedly well. Now I just had to figure out a way to keep her from wanting to go universe hopping . . . Was kind of hoping that if she thought her brother was permanently locked away, she wouldn’t go looking for him anywhere else and would just leave his creation alone now that she’d gotten her revenge. Maybe my little line about how Dean should punish me and not those around me made a difference? I don’t know. That’s why I’d said it. I was hoping it'd make her think twice about destroying God's creation when God was the object of her ire.

Getting to my feet, I felt a little . . . dizzy, I guess. Have to get used to it. Coming out of the fog . . . uh, guess she decided to make out with Dean . . . and then there were two . . . one she was kissing, and one she wasn’t. The one she wasn’t . . . well, he looked pissed off. When she backed away from the guy she’d been kissing, she said, “I’ve taken both your Marks. Now I’m free in this universe and both of your universes.”

No she wasn’t. Cain was still alive in the Mark of Cain Dean’s universe and my universe. Maybe it wasn’t a smart choice, but I still drew attention to myself. “What are you going to do now?”

Looking around she said, “Improve upon his creation. It is seriously lacking . . . When I’m done, nobody will worship him.” 

Okay. But she was staying here, right? I just needed to keep her talking a little longer. If I knew Dean at all, then the Dean I’d been planning with all morning should have started doing this witch thing as soon as Demon Dean took me . . . Rowena was the most promising target, because . . . Fate, so as soon as she was dead, Amara would go back in the cage, and we’d move on from here.

“So, you’re not meeting up with the other Amaras and –“

“Why would I do that? They can do what they like.”

“You’re not going to go to their universes and try to destroy them or –“

“I do not have my brother’s ego. I have no need of more than one universe. I think it’s time you return to yours.”

The next thing I knew I was standing on a porch looking out at a 1000 pairs of eyes. They belonged to faces I knew. _Okay, so I’m here, but the others . . . I just annoyed her, so she sent me here on my own, right? How’d she know where I lived? Does that mean she –_

“She has no idea where we are. I made her think it was her. She won’t come looking.” 

Looking at Chuck, who was to my left, I . . . well, I didn’t know what to think. “But the rest of them . . . they’re going to –“

Chuck looked over his shoulder behind us, so naturally I did too. “What the fuck? Are you fucking kidding me? How close were the rest of them to finishing-“

Chuck shrugged. “She can have one universe. I’m looking forward to seeing what she does with it.”

“What about the damn trunk? She –“

“That one she’ll share with me.” 

“What about –“

“This one? Oh, this one will be fine. Like I said, she has a shiny new toy to play with . . . she won’t come looking.” 

“You know what? This one will be fine . . . because it won’t have you in it. Get out! You did fuck all when everything was collapsing down around us. ”

“It’s not time for me to go yet, and I seem to remember giving you my help almost anytime you asked.”

“Yeah, well then I’m asking you to take it back.”

“Can’t do that . . . you know how it is. Can’t change the past.”

“You fucking can when it suits you, can’t you?”

“You’re right. I let you bend the rules an awful lot, but why would I take it back?”

“Because there was another way . . . a way where she could’ve been locked away, and you chose –“

“To have you take over here?”

“I don’t want it.” Turning to walk away from him, I stopped when I caught sight of who was really behind me. Did I have that right? What the fuck were we going to do with all of them? Dean, solo-Dean, Dean, I’m guessing who was previously MoC Dean, despondent Dean, kid Dean, Dad, Rogue, John, Mary, Cas, baby Sam, post-Amara Sam, and another Sam, but it wasn’t Purgatory Sam. “You brought back evil Sam!”

“I told you if you finished, I’d bring you all back to the moment you left . . . nobody here would notice much difference.”

“You’re such an asshole.”

“Are you mad because I played a perfect hand and won?”

“Fuck off, Chuck . . . Go teach literature to the 8 year olds until . . . until you’re ready to go play house with your sister in the fucking trunk . . . I’m not talking to you anymore.”

Looking out at the kids, I didn’t really know what to say. I looked to Ty for help, and he smiled briefly before coming up to give me a hug, so we could talk without anyone else hearing. “They’re not all shifters are they?”

“No.”

“Leviathan?”

“I wish.”

He laughed and said, “So, we have 4 more Deans?”

Tearing up a little, I said, “5 . . . the kid with blonde hair is him too. The baby is Sam.”

“And the other Sam?”

“He’s a work in progress, but he’s okay for the most part.”

“Evil Sam? Was that –“

“Our Sam . . . I killed him, but now he’s back.”

“So, keep an eye on him again?”

“Yeah.”

“The other man and woman?”

“Dean and Sam’s parents . . . John and Mary. She hates me.”

He laughed again and said, “And Cas is just –“

“Our Cas, but he died. I haven’t seen him in so long . . . I thought he was really gone.”

“Why isn’t Dean saying anything?”

“He was a demon until a few minutes ago . . . He’s holding Rogue and . . . I told her he was gone, and he was, but now I guess he's not . . . He’ll be okay again . . . they all will.”

“Will you?”

“I don’t know . . . guess I’ll have to be. It’s what we do, right?” I had no idea what I was going to do now. I had the mess behind me to sort out, the kids in front of me to help raise, New Orleans to clear, and a universe to put right . . . guess I had time to do it. I couldn’t die now. That’s what Amara did . . . She locked away one of the Chucks forever, and to do it, she made it so I had to live forever . . . no afterlife for me. And I'd been fine with that in the moment. In fact, I'd played her to make it happen, but it was supposed to be reversed when the rest of the team killed Rowena.

I’d been scheming when I told Amara I was tired, but I’d been truthful too . . . I mean I wanted to see my daughter grow up, which is something I’d never thought would happen, but now I was going to see her grow old and die too. The same went for the other kids in the camp and Dean. If he'd stayed the way he was, and I was this way . . . I don't know. Maybe I could've found a way to live forever with him the way I'd planned to be dead forever with him. He would've had to forgive me eventually, even as a demon, but now we were on opposite sides of it again. I had no idea what to tell him . . . if he even cared about that anymore. Maybe he wasn't even all human, just enough that he could connect with Rogue, because my connection was picking up weird vibes from him. I'm thinking there had to be some problems there with Amara pulling he and the other Dean apart while they were a demon. Couldn’t really show my face around Rogue right now, because she’d gone through such a horrible ordeal after I told her that her Dad wouldn’t be coming back, and yet there he was or at least there he appeared to be. What about solo-Dean? He wasn’t her Dad, but he’d been stepping into the role, and now evil Sam would be there to take that off of him. What if Evil Sam started trying to pick them off again? I’d even watch Cas grow old and die if he didn’t take his grace back. I had to fix this. I just wasn’t sure how.


End file.
